


All in a Day's Work

by vorare



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Apocalyptic Future, Belly Kink, Cecil Has Tentacles, Cecil eats people, Cecil is Inhuman, Coming Untouched, Digestion kink, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Soft Vore, Vore, give it a chance even if vore isn't your thing - you might like it anyway
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-04-17 07:16:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 70,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4657473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vorare/pseuds/vorare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil is a government-engineered corpse-cleanup monster. Carlos is his newly assigned "handler."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Accident

**Author's Note:**

> I've already been posting this story in a vore-specific community, but I wanted to post it in a more fandom-oriented place, and I was always kind of disappointed that there were no vore stories for WTNV, particularly here on Ao3. So I guess I'm here to remedy that!~

Hunger was a jagged, toothy thing squirming in the hollow of Cecil’s stomach. There was nothing that could distract from it: not pacing his cell, not gnawing the well-worn cage bars that surrounded him on three sides, not curling up in a ball on the floor, not even talking to the walls – his “listeners.”

“They’ll be sending my new handler soon,” he told the walls, and himself. “It won’t take much longer for them to reassign me. There’s plenty of work to be done and they need me to do it. They need me to… Augh…” The thought of work – of feeding – made his stomach ache with need, and he pressed a fist against it as it emitted a ferocious growl. “They could’ve at least brought me a snack,” he complained, surly, “ _something_ to tide me over.”

They had brought him nothing. Since the Accident – as Cecil had taken to referring to it in his head – a week prior, Cecil had been left in his cage with the door locked. No one had even looked in on him. He hadn’t cared for the first few days, his stomach being hard at work on his heavy meal, inclining him to sleep most of the time in the torpor of digestion, but since his body had finished processing his former handler, the days had become increasingly long stretches of trying to soothe his rumbling belly as it demanded more food. 

Cecil supposed it was possible that the delay might be a form of punishment. Eat your handler and we’ll take our good old time assigning you a new one – he had to admit that was probably fair. But it wasn’t his _fault_ , what had happened. Not that they could know that for certain. It had definitely looked pretty incriminating, he knew, when they had discovered him lying on the exam table hugging the still-squirming human-shaped bulge in his gut, belching his satisfaction, eyes rolled back with primal bliss. He hadn’t even noticed their presence, so caught up in the exquisite fullness and the absurdly pleasurable sensations the movements inside his belly elicited, until one of them had slapped him across the face.

Between rich burps and moans of pleasure he couldn’t seem to stifle, Cecil had tried to explain what happened, tried to explain that it had been an accident but, as they knew full well, he couldn’t spit up his handler now that he was completely lodged in his stomach cavity, so he was sorry – really he was – but they were just going to have to get him a new one.

They had turned away to confer amongst themselves, and Cecil couldn’t make out more than a word or two – “worthless,” “expensive” – of their solemnly whispered conversation. But when they turned back to him, they had merely directed him – and when he proved reluctant to move, shunted him – back to his cage, closing and locking the door, and left him alone. 

Cecil had lain down there in his usual spot, savoring the movements in his belly until there were no more and his stomach began to gurgle and groan in earnest with digestion. Then he had fallen into blissful sleep while his brutally efficient gut broke down and absorbed every part of his handler, from skin to fat to muscle to organs to bones, and even clothes. In the few times he woke, massaging his softening, shrinking belly and hiccupping softly, he did not feel any remorse; it was his handler’s fault what had happened, after all. His body had merely done what came naturally to it, and no one could blame _him_ for that. 

But now, with an empty room and an equally empty belly, Cecil doubted. Was there something he could have done differently? When his handler had put the jaw-crank in his mouth and stuck his head inside, headlamp at his brow to get a better look at the back of Cecil’s throat, he could have signaled that the crank was a little loose, that his jaw wasn’t fully immobilized. He supposed that when his handler had pressed his head further in to make sure Cecil’s esophageal tract was clear of any blockages, Cecil could have tried to pull back, told him that was a bit too far. But it had felt so good to start swallowing, and he hadn’t been able to stop, and before he knew it his hands were clutching at his handler’s hips, his tentacles winding around his legs, pulling him up vertical to ease his path down Cecil’s gullet, and the crank had come free and gotten swallowed down too. There was nothing he could do then, helplessly swallowing as his handler’s body pressed in and in and in, and then with a final desperate _GULP_ of kicking feet he had him completely inside, sliding down until he settled inside Cecil’s stomach, which greeted its occupant with a contented groan.

It had been, without question, the most satisfying meal of his life. He had had some bigger ones, certainly, and tastier ones (dusty clothes were not particularly pleasant on the palate), but he had never fed on a _live_ human before. He had fantasized about it, of course, the way it would feel to force a struggling body down his gullet rather than a limp dead weight, how his stomach would react to kicking and squirming within, but even the daydreams that made him salivate the most could not have compared to the delicious reality. Not only had the movements of his living meal filled him with carnal pleasure, but the flesh had been so very, very fresh, warm and rich compared to his usual cold fare. It had been easier on his digestion, and so much more satisfying. The idea that it had only been a fluke, that he was never going to get the opportunity to glut on a live human again, was enough to make him whimper. 

But feeding on live humans was not Cecil’s purpose, and he knew that. He had been made and brought up to feed on corpses, to clean up the wastelands, to protect those still living from even more terrible monsters that might come calling if drawn by the scent of a decaying or burning body. Satisfying his own appetite was secondary to that purpose, as they never let him forget. If he kept up this behavior, filling his belly with the living rather than the dead, he knew they would have him put down. And that thought scared him more than knowing he could never fully satisfy his stomach again. He knew he would have to be on his best behavior for his new handler, prove that he wasn’t a risk. 

He had to admit he was not doing well on that count thus far. His new handler hadn’t even appeared yet, and he already found himself imagining what he or she might look like, what he or she might _taste_ like… It didn’t help that his stomach growled and rumbled with want every time that thought crossed his mind. He tried to reassure himself that as soon as his handler did appear, there would be work for him to do, and that would be enough to distract him, displacing his craving for fresh flesh onto the corpse he was supposed to eat. It would be easier after that, as the temptation would surely be tempered by a full stomach. As long as they kept him on a reasonably full schedule, ensuring that his belly was never quite empty, it ought to be easy enough.

Cecil perked up, holding his breath as finally – _finally_ – he heard footsteps approaching his cell. Could it be? Was his new handler finally coming to claim him? Cecil scrambled to his feet and pressed as close to the front of his cage as he could, hands gripping the bars, tentacles snaking around them in tight, anxious coils. 

The door opened, a man stepped inside, and Cecil got his first look at his new handler. His heart melted and his stomach groaned. The scientist, in his slightly rumpled white lab coat, with his gorgeous, delicate dark skin, and the most beautiful, full head of hair Cecil had ever seen, made his heart flutter at the same time as it made his mouth wet with drool. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted more to kiss him or devour him – both, probably. But he knew he would be allowed to do neither.

The scientist looked up from his clipboard, met Cecil’s eyes. He looked slightly startled, but then again, most people were when they saw Cecil’s faintly glowing pinkish irises for the first time, and then of course there were his tentacles. But the scientist didn’t lose composure. “Cecil?” he said, in oaky tones that made Cecil’s tentacles shiver and writhe. “I’m your new handler, Carlos.”

“ _Carlos_ ,” Cecil breathed reverently. He noticed a slightly concerned-looking frown cross Carlos’s face, and realized he had been licking his lips hungrily, thin ribbons of drool dripping from his chin. He hastened to wipe it away on the back of his hand, feeling his face heat with embarrassment. “Sorry – about that,” he stammered, feeling like he was tripping over his own tongue – he, to whom words and speaking aloud usually came so effortlessly. “They, uh, haven’t fed me in… a while.”

“Oh, I understand,” said Carlos, and then proceeded to say some things about enzymes and salivation that were so science-y that Cecil felt like his eyes must be glazing over. 

“Um, right,” he said lamely when Carlos had finished, “That’s neat.” _Neat? NEAT?!_ He cursed himself silently the moment the idiotic word had passed his lips.

But Carlos smiled, revealing the most beautiful, straight, perfect teeth. The antithesis of Cecil’s own sharp, jagged yellowish ones, he knew. “It is,” Carlos agreed. “I’d love to get a sample of yours to do some analyses.” 

“Sure, but… is there any work for me on the schedule today?” Cecil tried not to sound too desperate, tried not to let this handsome scientist see how enslaved he was to his appetite, but the fact was that he needed to feed and his body wasn’t about to let him forget it. His stomach chimed in with a protracted, whiny growl, which Carlos definitely heard, based on the way his gaze flicked down – with scientific interest, it seemed to Cecil – to Cecil’s abdomen.

“They haven’t put any calls through to me yet,” Carlos admitted, somewhat apologetically. “I think they wanted to give me a little time to adjust to my new… work environment. It’s my first time being a handler for one of you. My first time doing field work in years, really.” He sounded excited at the prospect. Cecil would have found it cute, if he wasn’t so hungry.

Cecil abruptly found himself wondering whether Carlos had been told about what had happened to Cecil’s last handler. Mostly, he hoped he hadn’t. But maybe if he had been, he would understand that it was important – not just for Cecil’s comfort, but for Carlos’s own safety – that Cecil be fed. “It’s been a week since I ate,” he informed Carlos, trying not to sound like he was whining.

“Yes, so it says here,” Carlos concurred, consulting a chart on his clipboard. “It says you were fed after the death of your former handler, and left to wait for reassignment.” He frowned, flipping a few pages. “If you weren’t on a call that day, how was your handler killed?”

Cecil averted his eyes guiltily. _He doesn’t know._ “Let’s not talk about that,” he said. “It was a tragic accident.”

Carlos nodded thoughtfully, looking sympathetic. He probably thought “tragic accident” meant something more along the lines of a filing cabinet falling on the man’s head, or eating a contaminated batch of beans. His look certainly didn’t suggest he had even the slightest inkling that his predecessor had ended up alive in Cecil’s stomach. “No place is safe these days,” he said solemnly. 

“No, I guess not,” Cecil agreed, ruminating on the fact that standing with one’s head stuck down the throat of a creature designed and trained to eat human bodies was a particularly unsafe place to find oneself. Definitely not his fault, what had followed.

“Well, I’ll let you know as soon as they page me with a call for you,” said Carlos, moving to the side of the cell to investigate the exam table and the tools that lay on one side of it. Cecil knew he would find the jaw-crank missing.

“Thanks,” Cecil said lamely, knowing there was nothing else he could do. Waiting, waiting, and more waiting. When a call finally did come in, he might be so desperate to eat that he would fall upon Carlos the moment his cage was opened. Sullen, he retreated to a back corner of his cage and sat down there, hunching over his painfully empty stomach like an animal licking its wounds.

Having Carlos there only took things from bad to worse as far as his appetite was concerned. The smell of him slowly permeating the cell made Cecil’s stomach growl and complain twice as often, and he had to mop drool from his lips with increasing frequency. He couldn’t help but fantasize about Carlos unlocking his cage door and coming inside, maybe even willingly submitting himself to Cecil, surrendering his perfect body as Cecil’s lunch. The idea, farfetched as it was, made his heart beat faster and his face flush with heat, and he licked his lips, watching Carlos categorize and label his new tools outside the cage.

It seemed like hours of agony before Cecil heard the muffled beeping of the pager in Carlos’s lab coat pocket. “Got a call,” Carlos announced after he had plucked the device from his pocket and checked the message on it. He sounded a little nervous, Cecil couldn’t help but notice. That wasn’t unusual for handlers on their first call, though. 

_Thank goodness!_ Cecil hoped it wouldn’t be a long drive to the location; he didn’t know how long he would be able to stand sitting next to Carlos. But what mattered was that he had a finite goal to focus on now, a meal ready and waiting for him. He sprang to his feet and went to the front of the cage, standing ready by the door for Carlos to let him out. 

Carlos fumbled a little with the keys as he unlocked the cage door; he seemed distracted by the writhing movement of Cecil’s tentacles. Cecil, meanwhile, bounced impatiently from one foot to the other until the cage door sprung open, letting him step out into the cell outside his cage. He did not allow himself to look at Carlos. There would be plenty of time to admire his handsome new handler _after_ he had something in his stomach.

Cecil, well-accustomed to the routine of calls, marched purposefully out of the cell and down the corridor toward the exit that would take him to the vehicle lot. Carlos hurried after him. Once outside, Cecil climbed into the passenger seat of the nearest jeep, waiting impatiently for Carlos to catch up and take the driver’s side.

Carlos did so, then looked rather nonplussed about programming the GPS unit. Cecil supposed he would not have had occasion to use one before. After a few minutes’ frustrating wait as Carlos examined the unit with lingering curiosity and not much proactive progress toward actually programming in their destination, Cecil, without looking at him, informed him that he knew where most of the common locations were, and that he might be able to just tell Carlos the way if he read the coordinates to him. Carlos, though seeming a little disappointed at finding his scientific exploration of the GPS unit cut short, relayed the coordinates, and Cecil was relieved to find that he knew the location, and moreover that it was just about the nearest location he could have had the good luck to be called to.

At Cecil’s encouragement, Carlos started up the jeep and began to drive. Cecil directed him, using his knowledge of the subtle and not-so-subtle landmarks of the seemingly featureless desert wasteland to guide Carlos to their intended destination. Directing and narrating their progress was a welcome distraction from the hungry gurgling in Cecil’s impatient belly. He found himself pointing out things to Carlos outside of what was necessary for directions, cheerfully indicating the canyon from which strange lights could be seen and human-sounding screams could be heard dusk till dawn, the cacti that often seemed to be making particularly rude gestures with their spiny limbs, and the dunes from which giant subterranean worms could burst at any given moment.

Carlos took in all this information with interest and only some indication of trepidation, but he seemed too preoccupied with the goal they were driving towards to be diverted much by the interests of the landscape. Cecil was still doing his best not to look at his handler, but occasional sidelong glances in his general direction showed that his hands were gripping the steering wheel very tightly, and Cecil thought he heard him mutter under his breath more than once, like some sort of self-affirming mantra, “A scientist is always fine.”

It was only about a half an hour before the tumbledown concrete ruin of a military base, a location which bands of human civilians had been using as shelter and redoubt for many years now, appeared on the horizon, and soon enough they had pulled up in front of it. Carlos parked, but didn’t turn off the engine; his hands were still on the wheel. “How does this work?” he asked after a long moment.

“Well, going in is a start,” said Cecil, too impatient to be as gentle as he might have liked. “They show us to the body. I eat. Then we head back.”

“Right.” Carlos took a breath, turned off the ignition, and got out of the jeep. Cecil followed, keeping behind him; years of experience had taught him to let his handler go first, as not all humans were accustomed to the sight of his kind, and plenty of them were trigger-happy when it came to anything with tentacles and sharp teeth.

After Carlos introduced himself to the door sentry, they were admitted into the dark, musty-smelling interior of the building, and a few somber-faced humans with battered guns prominent on their belts or clutched in their hands led them deep into its catacombs. Cecil had been here before; the layout was not unfamiliar to him, and he knew where they were going – they reserved a particular room for the purpose, a dark place far from the sleeping and eating quarters of the living. As they passed into the dim back passageways, Carlos’s white lab coat stood out like a beacon in the grimy dankness. Cecil’s stomach knew what was coming, and growled more and more as they neared their goal; in the solemn quiet, it was impossible for it to go unnoticed, and it drew looks from the humans that were, if not downright disgusted, certainly cold.

Finally, they reached the right chamber. A few objects had been piled seemingly arbitrarily near the doorway – a gun; a candle; an old photograph of a woman, singed at the edges; a teddy bear with most of the stuffing fallen out bearing a note scrawled in a child’s hand. Cecil had seen this sort of thing enough to know that it was a shrine or tribute of sorts to the person who had died and now lay within the room beyond, waiting for him. He licked his lips.

The humans gestured Carlos and Cecil into the room, and then the door was shut behind them. The small, dank chamber was illuminated by a single, sputtering bare bulb near the center of the room, and below it, as if under a spotlight, lay the corpse: an older middle-aged man, his hands arranged to be folded over his upper abdomen, though they couldn’t fully conceal the gory hole there that bespoke of a fatal encounter with something with very large horns or teeth. 

Cecil wasted no time in going to his work. If the clothes had been clean, he would have undressed the body first, but these were covered in blood, and he had been trained to eat clothes that were thus contaminated, the better to defend against the possibility of other monsters being attracted by the lingering smell. So he knelt right away at by the corpse’s head, lifting it up with one hand at either temple, his tentacles winding around the dead man’s limbs and torso.

He felt immediately that the body had not gone stiff yet, which he was glad of, as it would make for a more pleasant and less effortful meal. He turned the corpse on its side first, wholly undoing the peaceful arrangement of the hands. Having the body sideways made getting the shoulders into his throat easier; it was not impossible otherwise, but just getting his jaws around horizontal shoulders took more time than Cecil was prepared to expend. He put the crown of the head to his lips and worked his jaws open around it. His mouth was already well-lubricated with thick saliva, and once his jaw had clicked out of place, the corpse’s head slid inside very easily. His throat was ready and eager to receive it, and his first hard gulp sent the entire head into his throat. Subsequent swallows were as natural as breathing, even as the corpse’s broad shoulders forced his jaw and gullet to distend greatly and abruptly. His tentacles helped heft the corpse up as he continued to gulp, and were useful for a few helpful pushes downward when the dead man’s clothes became sticky and heavy and damp with saliva and caught in Cecil’s throat. It was a considerable relief when Cecil felt the head of the corpse press into his waiting stomach, and felt it begin to distend as the shoulders joined the head in the elastic cavity. He arched his back and spread his legs to accommodate his belly swelling as it filled, leaning on his hands, having given all the support of what remained of the corpse outside of him over to his tentacles. It barely took any active swallowing anymore once the body was in up to the hips; the legs slid slowly inward almost by the force of gravity alone. Shoes, of course, were too valuable to be spared and had been removed by the humans, and so the corpse’s cold feet were bare as they finally slid past Cecil’s lips. He held them in his mouth for a moment, savoring the salt-sweat taste of human skin, before at last, with a thick _gu-ulp_ , he sent the last of the dead man down his gullet.

He leaned back with a hand on his belly as peristalsis in his lower esophagus slowly worked the legs down. The pressure in his chest decreased as all the weight of his meal settled lower, his stomach finally closing over the heavy load. He took a deep breath, sighing in relief, eyes half-closed as the torpid pleasure of fullness settled over his satisfied body.

Carlos had watched all this with as much detached scientific fascination as he could muster, but if truth was told, he had found it rather disturbing watching an entire man slowly disappear down Cecil’s throat and come to rest as a rounded bulge in his middle. Perhaps most mortifying of all was how _normal_ this action seemed to Cecil. Carlos watched Cecil lick his lips and fingers thoroughly, watched him belch luxuriantly and shamelessly, watched him give his human-filled belly an appreciative pat. His behavior made it quite clear that he thought of the dead man as nothing more than food. And if he could see a dead man that way, would it be much of a stretch to consider a live one the same way? Carlos shook his head, trying not to dwell on it. It was silly, not to mention far from empirical, to feel fear like that over one observation. No trials had been done. And anyway, Cecil’s kind were carefully and selectively bred and trained to devour the _dead_ , not the living.

Cecil didn’t even think of Carlos’s presence until some minutes after he had finished his meal, and when he did, he turned a satisfied smile on him. “Our first call together seems to be – _urrp_ – a success,” he said.

Carlos merely nodded. “So – we go back now?” He hoped he would remember the way, or be able to program the GPS unit; Cecil looked in imminent danger of falling asleep even now, so Carlos was not banking on receiving his directions for the return journey. 

“Yeahhh,” Cecil replied languidly. His mind was already on returning to his cage, curling up in the corner and napping while his full belly did its work.

He stood, using his tentacles to help him get to his feet. He was accustomed to the sensation of significant weight being added to his belly, but he was always glad to have his tentacles to support him as he adjusted to his altered center of gravity. He leaned back on his heels to keep from tipping forward, and set his feet wide apart to help distribute the weight inside more evenly across his hips. The material in which his owners dressed him was a help, too; skintight, flexible and highly elastic, yet firm and supportive, it helped keep his belly, when full, from swaying or sloshing too much and throwing off his balance. 

He followed Carlos out of the room. The humans who had stayed sentry outside the door looked away from him, turning immediately to lead them back outside. Cecil’s footsteps felt plodding and heavy with the weight of the meal inside him, and he could already feel his stomach beginning to churn and groan, digesting. He tried not to burp, knowing that would draw looks of ultimate disgust and disdain from the humans leading them. When he was younger, he had once tried to tell some offended humans that it was a compliment, but that assertion had not been well-received. Apparently it brought no one any comfort to know that their friend or family member had been a satisfying meal.

He was able to keep down everything but a few soft hiccups until he and Carlos were safely outside and climbing back into the jeep. He leaned back in the passenger seat, resting his hands on his belly with a sigh and a long, rich burp now that the humans were out of earshot. “You can find the way back, right?” he mumbled to Carlos, already half-asleep

“Yeah. I think so,” said Carlos, but Cecil was already snoring. Carlos shook his head and started up the jeep, backing away from the redoubt and turning back into the desert.

The drive back was more than a bit uncomfortable for Carlos. Beneath the soft drone of Cecil’s snoring and the growl of the jeep’s engine, he could literally hear the dead man digesting. Rich liquid gurgles, glurps, groans, rumbles, and churns were all too audible from within Cecil’s bloated belly, and Carlos couldn’t help visualizing the corpse’s flesh breaking down as the enzymes did their work. Some fearful, primal part of his otherwise rational brain whispered that _That could be you in there. What makes you think you couldn’t be food to him? What could you possibly do to stop him if he decided you were dinner?_ His mind’s eye fixed on the image of the corpse being pulled further and further into Cecil with the inexorable power of each swallow, until the feet had disappeared. Carlos’s skin itched with claustrophobia as he thought of what it would be like to be in that man’s position, only still alive. Surely the entire body could not be forced to fit in Cecil’s stomach without breaking bones.

He endeavored to push the thought from his mind. He was Cecil’s handler now, his supervisor, his caregiver; the idea that Cecil would even think of doing him harm was ridiculous, and didn’t bear thinking about. 

It was growing dark when the drive was through. When Carlos pulled into the vehicle lot, he turned off the ignition and sat still for a moment. He eyed one of Cecil’s tentacles, laying near him, slack in sleep; he found himself curious about how the smooth, slightly spongy-looking purplish-black skin would feel to the touch. It looked a bit like how Carlos imagined the surface of a tongue would look, minus the slime. He imagined the tentacles were as flexible and strong as tongues, too. He hoped there would be opportunity to give them the thorough study they deserved.

He touched Cecil’s arm gently, waking him, and quietly told him that they had arrived back. Cecil yawned, smacked his lips sleepily, and stretched all his limbs, tentacles that had been draped here and there across the seats of the jeep rising and uncurling to their fullest extent before they relaxed again. Then he slid out of the jeep, nearly overbalancing and grasping the side of the jeep with hands and tentacles to right himself. Carlos supposed it was only natural to have a little trouble regulating balance with the weight of an entire other person inside you, particularly after a deep sleep. Carlos could have sworn even in the dimness that Cecil’s cheeks colored a little when he noticed him watching, and if it weren’t for the present circumstances, Carlos might have found it… endearing.

They went inside and returned to Cecil’s cell. Cecil went into his cage straightaway without Carlos needing to ask him to, and lay down in the corner by the wall, yawning and curling up around his belly. He seemed to be asleep again before Carlos had even closed the cage door.


	2. The Second Call

Cecil seemed to be asleep again before Carlos had even closed the cage door. Carlos was amazed by how easily Cecil seemed to make himself comfortable on the bare concrete floor, lacking even the most threadbare of blankets or pillows, but then he supposed Cecil had been sleeping on hard floors in cages his entire life. 

Once Cecil’s cage was closed and locked, Carlos went to the small desk on the side of the cell opposite the exam table. He sat and took up his clipboard, dutifully logging in the record of the successfully answered call. With that bit of bureaucracy out of the way, he slipped a notebook from an interior pocket of his lab coat and recorded his own notes – all his observations concerning the drive, the location, Cecil, the corpse, and the alimentary union of the latter two.

Cecil was not snoring now, but his stomach was still far from quiet, emitting a wide variety of sounds which Carlos did his best to ignore. Finally, failing that, he decided he had better make scientific note of them, at least, and spent a chunk of the evening cataloguing the sundry digestion noises in his notebook via creative usages of onomatopoeia. He resolved to take the time at some point to investigate which noises correlated to which specific digestive processes in Cecil’s system. If he could thoroughly understand Cecil’s digestive system, from a scientific perspective, perhaps it would help assuage any instinctual fear of it that ignorance might bring on. Glancing over his shoulder at the exam table and its various tools, he wondered whether that same goal wasn’t part of why regular examinations were performed by handlers on their charges, even if the official reason the administration gave for requiring them was the assurance of the health and functionality of its “operatives.”

Carlos found himself yawning soon enough, and rather than retiring to his own old quarters near the laboratory, he turned off the light, took off his lab coat and draped it over the back of the chair, and laid down on the small pallet beside the desk. The few other handlers he had had the opportunity to speak to after learning of his reassignment had told him that it was a good idea to sleep in the cell, at least for the first few nights, to accustom oneself to the presence of their charge and vice versa. Cecil was definitely going to take some getting used to, and if staying near him would help that along, Carlos intended to do so. He yawned again, turned onto his side, and was soon asleep. 

Cecil woke rather early the next morning, relaxed and contented. He pushed up onto his knees and leaned forward onto his hands to stretch the stiffness out of his back. His heavy belly brushed the floor as he arched his back and leaned into the stretch, humming in contentment. The relief of waking up with a satisfyingly full gut, after so many days waking up hungry, was beyond compare. He was about to soliloquize to the walls on the subject, but as he sat and leaned back against the wall to rub his belly, he abruptly noticed that Carlos was still in the cell, sound asleep on the pallet which his former handler had rarely, if ever, utilized.

Carlos was lying on his side, facing toward Cecil’s cage. He had shucked his lab coat, and the very worn plaid flannel he wore beneath it had the sleeves rolled up the elbows, exposing Carlos’s nicely shaped forearms, one of which was tucked beneath his head as he slumbered. His lovely, lovely hair tumbled over that forearm, and some of it was partly covering his face. Still, Cecil could see enough of his features to observe how peaceful he looked in sleep. He could not help narrating this most glorious of observations to the walls, but tried to keep his voice very low so as not to disturb his unconscious handler.

After a few minutes, though, Carlos did stir. He lifted his head, blinked slowly, yawned; then he sat up and looked at Cecil. “Were you talking to me?” he asked in a delightfully sleepy voice, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. 

“Oh, no,” Cecil assured him.

“Oh. To yourself, then?”

“No.”

Carlos frowned in puzzlement. After a moment he said hesitantly, “To – him?” He pointed at Cecil’s belly. 

Cecil raised a brow. “No. That would really be a silly thing to do.”

Carlos, deciding to let the mystery lie for the moment, got up and donned his lab coat. He looked at his pager, but it had no new messages. “Should we expect another call today?” he said absently, putting on his glasses.

“Definitely not,” Cecil said. “They keep us on a one-day-on, one-day-off schedule, you know. I _wish_ I was on call every day.” 

“Do you? Wouldn’t that be, well, a lot to eat?” Carlos said, noting how full Cecil’s belly still looked after a full night’s digestion.

“Mm, yes. It’d be great. To be so wonderfully full all the time – can you _imagine_ anything better?”

Carlos could not think of anything to say to that, except, “You really seem to like your job.”

“I do,” Cecil affirmed. “Well, it’s what I was made for. We should all accept our given purpose with pride. I hope you’ll come to enjoy yours just as much,” he ventured to add. 

“I hope so, too,” Carlos said, giving a half-smile which gave Cecil just a fleeting glimpse of those perfect teeth. He flipped a few pages on his clipboard. “So if it’s one of these – off-days, I’m supposed to…”

“Examine me, yeah,” Cecil said, feeling a flurry of mixed feelings at the prospect. Being close to and touched by Carlos could not be unpleasant – the thought made his heart flutter – but the memory of what had happened during his last examination was all too fresh in his mind. He didn’t want the same thing to repeat itself, not only for Carlos’s sake, but for his own. He had been supremely lucky that such an egregious error had gone mostly unpunished the first time, but he knew there would be no leniency for him on a repeat offense. He would be taken, screaming and struggling as much as he liked, to no avail, to wherever it was in the basement that they took unruly or uncooperative operatives. But unlike last time, his stomach was full, and the jaw-crank hadn’t been replaced. Carlos probably wouldn’t even give his throat more than a cursory look. He assured himself that it would be fine.

“Let’s go ahead and do that,” said Carlos, interrupting Cecil’s troubled reverie by coming over and unlocking the cage door.

Cecil obediently pushed himself to his feet with his tentacles and plodded over to the exam table, climbing up to sit atop it as he usually did.

Carlos approached. He was reading over his clipboard, no doubt familiarizing himself with the procedure and instructions for examining his charge. When he looked up, he said, “Do you take this off?” He indicated Cecil’s gear, the black fiber he wore from neck to ankles.

“I can,” said Cecil, feeling his face heat. His tentacles set to work peeling off his upper garment before Carlos could clarify whether or not he should. He removed it from his torso, head, and arms, though he let it stay resting where it was at the base of his tentacles where they joined with his lower back; it was always a pain to negotiate it back over them. He sighed; the feeling of being free of the gear was rather a relief, for though it supported his stomach, it was also somewhat restricting to it. He leaned back and spread his thighs apart, letting his belly rest on the table, the chill of it welcome on his warm skin. 

Carlos put the stethoscope around his neck, and then he put both hands on Cecil’s belly. Cecil flushed at Carlos’s touch on his bare, sensitive stretched skin, but Carlos’s hands were warm, and he didn’t flinch. Carlos palpated Cecil’s belly carefully and thoroughly, and Cecil’s stomach burbled in response. The resultant shifting of the chunks of flesh and bone that were still solid by this point forced several involuntary burps out of Cecil. Carlos’s manual exploration continued for some time, and Cecil began to thoroughly enjoy it, as it was rather like having his belly rubbed for him, and he leaned back his head with a soft hiccup and a sigh of pleasure.

Carlos was both scientifically and morbidly fascinated by what he was able to feel. Cecil’s belly was, for the most part, quite soft. Not soft in the way that a belly thick with fat would be, but rather in a way that indicated that its heavy contents had largely turned to a dense soupy slurry. But when Carlos pressed deeper, he could feel solid lumps deep within, parts of the corpse not yet rendered semiliquid by the relentless churn of digestion. With persistent palpation he thought he identified part of a femur and what could have been the skull. Still, Carlos was amazed at how little solidity and definition the huge meal retained after just under twelve hours of digestion. Cecil’s enzymes must be incredibly powerful; Carlos found himself wishing he had a way to get a sample. 

When Carlos had fully satiated his curiosity for the feel of Cecil’s gut, he looked up to find Cecil’s head tilted back and his eyes closed. For a moment he thought him asleep, but as Cecil gave a contented hum and opened his eyes, he realized that he had just been _enjoying_ Carlos’s attentions. He didn’t quite know what to make of that, and decided to carry on with his examination as if he hadn’t noticed.

He put in the earpieces of the stethoscope and put the chest piece against the upper part of the curve of Cecil’s belly. If Cecil’s stomach was noisy from the outside, it was a veritable cacophony on the inside; gurgles and groans assaulted his ears, ten times as loud with the amplification of the stethoscope, the low thrum of Cecil’s nearby heartbeat providing a steady background beat. He had no frame of reference to say whether it sounded _healthy_ , but it was certainly very active, and Carlos supposed that for a stomach that had to work as hard as Cecil’s did, that was a good thing.

The stomach gave a particularly loud and protracted rumble, followed by a very loud, low sound which took a startled Carlos a moment to identify as Cecil burping. Cecil gave the side of his belly a few light pats, which reverberated in Carlos’s earpieces. He had the sudden uncomfortable impression that this was the very same way he would hear such sounds from _inside_ Cecil’s stomach, and before his imagination could take the unwanted notion any further, he quickly pulled the chest piece away from Cecil’s skin. 

Carlos made a few notes on his clipboard, then looked back to Cecil. “Okay, open your mouth now.”

Cecil hesitated for a moment, a shadow of something Carlos couldn’t quite identify passing behind his eyes, but then he opened his mouth. He didn’t unhinge his jaw, so his mouth was stretched no wider than most humans’ could. Carlos picked up the small flashlight from the table and switched it on, angling it into Cecil’s open jaws to illuminate the dark, slimy opening of his throat. As he leaned in closer, he got a whiff of Cecil’s breath; it smelled like raw meat and battery acid, strongly enough to leave Carlos’s head spinning. The forms said that Carlos was supposed to check Cecil’s esophagus, make sure it was free of obstruction, but Carlos wasn’t about to stick his hand, or any other part of him for that matter, into that putrid gullet. Besides, he was pretty sure Cecil would be able to just tell him if he felt that anything actually was lodged somewhere in his throat. So he pulled back after a moment’s inspection of his charge’s mouth, deciding that all looked well, even if it couldn’t be said that it _smelled_ well. 

“You can close your mouth.” Carlos couldn’t help noticing that a fleeting look of relief passed over Cecil’s face when he said that.

Carlos jotted down a few more observations on the form. He was just about to tell Cecil that he could return to his cage, when the pager in his pocket began to beep. He fished it out, nonplussed, and read the message. He frowned and read the message again. Then he said, “Well, Cecil, we’ve got a call.”

“What?” said Cecil, looking as startled as Carlos felt. “They must have sent it to the wrong handler. They never, _ever_ send me out two days in a row.”

“It looks like they are now,” Carlos said. “It’s definitely for you. It has your identification number.”

“Er,” Cecil said, “I know what I said before, but I don’t know if I can actually even _fit_ another meal right now…”

Carlos had to agree; he couldn’t imagine Cecil being able to cram another body into his belly, rounded and heavy and bloated as it still was. Still, he couldn’t exactly contest orders given to him. “The coordinates look like they’re pretty far away,” he offered. “It could be a long drive.”

Cecil perked up visibly at that notion. Yes, he thought, if the location was a good long ways away, he’d have more time to digest before he was faced with the new meal. And the prospect of gorging again before his body had even had time to feel a twinge of hunger was certainly appealing. He often fantasized about feasting, glutting himself beyond reason, and here was a real opportunity to see what it would feel like to be truly and utterly stuffed. A _sanctioned_ opportunity, at that.

He had to wonder, though, what was meant by this. Were they trying to make up for the nutrition he had missed during the days he had missed meals before Carlos had been assigned to him? Or were they aware, knowing more about his own anatomy than he did, that he would be incapable of ingesting another full meal so soon – making the call a punishment that would result in a painful and humiliating disgorging of his stomach contents? Or maybe – if he dared to hope for the best – had they decided that the unfortunate Accident could be attributed to Cecil’s appetite not being fully satisfied by the regular work schedule, and were giving him a more indulgent diet to keep the incident from repeating itself? The idea made him bite his lip. 

His tentacles set to work tugging his garment back on, working it over his belly until it stayed in place. He hopped off the table, indicating to Carlos that he was ready to go, and followed him out to the vehicle lot.

After some minutes of fiddling – which Cecil found much easier to be patient with today – Carlos figured out how to program their destination into the GPS unit, and then they were off. It was indeed a much longer drive than the day before, and Cecil napped through most of it, letting his stomach do as much work on his prior meal as possible before their arrival. When he was awake, though, he took pleasure in pointing landmarks out to Carlos as he had during their last drive, and today Carlos seemed more animated and interested in what he had to say, even expressing the desire to return to several of the places Cecil indicated, for the purposes of scientific study.

By the time they arrived, some four and a half hours later, the day had slid into a baking-hot afternoon, the sun’s rays lancing slantwise through the jeep’s windows. As they parked, both Cecil and Carlos were thinking what a relief it would be to get inside the cool darkness of the building’s interior.

As soon as they got out of the jeep, though, Cecil noticed that the door sentry had tied a scrap of cloth around her face to cover her nose and mouth. He grabbed for Carlos’s arm with a tentacle, keeping him from approaching the door. 

“What is it?” said Carlos, looking at the arresting tentacle, nonplussed.

“See how the sentry’s got her face all covered like that? There could be illness in there. Shaking sickness, or the flesh-crawling fever. You should stay out here.”

Carlos frowned. “If it’s not safe for me, it’s not safe for you. Is it?”

Cecil assured Carlos that he was immune to diseases that could afflict humans, and that it was perfectly safe for him even to feed on infected bodies. When he had convinced Carlos that the best course of action would be for him to stay in the jeep and await his return while Cecil went in, Cecil left Carlos behind and approached the sentry.

She moved to admit him without question. He pointed to her face covering and asked, “Shaking sickness?”

The sentry looked surprised to hear him speak; he was aware that not all humans knew his kind were capable of it. “Yes,” she said, after a moment’s hesitation. Her eyes flicked down to the curve of Cecil’s belly. “It must be keeping you busy.”

He thought to tell her that this was his first encounter with shaking sickness in some months, that his last meal had been gored by what might have been a sand-borer or else a one-horned dragoncat, but it was clear that she just wanted to do her duty of seeing him inside and was not interested in any actual conversation, so he stayed silent.

Once inside, it was evident that the sickness was bad here. It was not far along – most of the humans he saw had only preliminary tremors and sweating, but judging from the garbled moans he could hear echoing down the passageways, there were some who had progressed to full-on convulsions and nonsensical exclamations. And since they had called for him, it was safe to assume that at least one was already dead. A pair of symptomless humans wearing makeshift facemasks led him silently down the halls; the noisemaking of the more afflicted patients grew louder the further they went. This building was not nearly as large as the base they had visited yesterday, and it seemed to Cecil that they traversed the length of it before they arrived at their destination.

They had brought him to a makeshift sickbay, where a half dozen groaning, convulsing patients lay strapped down to tables with everything from belts to rope made from old shoelaces. Among the tables flitted two clearly overworked and hopeless nurses, a man and a woman, trying in vain to get their patients to drink water, to lie calmly. Only one of the patients on the tables was still; a young woman, curled up in a fetal position, her limbs frozen unnaturally in place, eyes glazed over with death. It was to her that Cecil’s guides ushered him. They then left him there, though the nurses remained.

It was not the first time he had been made to eat in a sickbay, but all the same he found it rather distasteful. It couldn’t be particularly comforting to the other patients to watch one of their own who had succumbed disappear down a gullet. In the case of the shaking sickness, at least, the other patients probably weren’t coherent or cognizant enough to understand what was happening. He didn’t ask why the body hadn’t been moved to its own room; in a complex as small as this one, with so many of their number ill, he knew he would be told that no other room could be spared.

So he set to work tugging the garments off of the body, stiff with dried sweat as they were. It took some minutes to work them off over the dead woman’s stiff limbs, but soon enough she lay naked, dark skin robbed by death of the warmth and radiance it had probably held in life. Gently he worked his hands and tentacles over her shoulders and thighs, trying to get some of the rigor to release from the tensed muscles. It took time, but with his stomach still comfortably full, he was not in any hurry, and eventually the muscles loosened enough that the arms and legs were able to be bent, which would make swallowing a great deal less effortful.

Now his meal was all prepared, and Cecil could only hope that his body would be ready to receive it. Considering, he decided that starting at the feet would be most prudent; legs, especially stiff ones, could at times be one of the more difficult parts of the body to settle in the stomach, and getting them in first would ensure that he would only have to deal with fitting the upper body into the overfull cavity, which should be easier given the natural curve of the spine. He half-knelt at the end of the table and pulled the feet to his lips, sucking the toes to entice his body with the taste of skin until his mouth had grown wet enough to facilitate swallowing. He pulled the feet from his mouth to let out a soft belch before slipping the feet back into his jaws to begin swallowing in earnest. 

It felt strange at first to be swallowing another meal while his stomach was still heavy, but he quickly lost himself in the pleasure of it. He held the corpse by the hips as he worked the legs down his gullet; feeling the feet press into the mostly-liquid remains of his last meal in his stomach was new sensation, a heat and pressure at the base of his esophagus. As more of the legs were forced in, he felt his already-expanded stomach stretch further, a sensation blissful enough to make his eyes roll. His tentacles pushed the corpse into his throat with more urgency, eager to see how it would feel to have the entire body packed into his overfull belly. After he had swallowed the head with a thick gulp, the arms still protruding from his jaws, he had to pause for a few moments to let things settle and to give himself a rest. He could feel the nurses’ gazes on him, and knew that the woman’s head must be visible as a prominent bulge in his throat, his gullet tight enough around it that her facial features were probably discernible. Aware that the image was probably disturbing to them, so as not to prolong it, he braced himself and hastened to continue swallowing, working in the arms with the help of his tentacles until he had swallowed everything down to the last of the fingers. His throat seemed to be working the corpse down uncommonly slowly, having some difficulty forcing all of it into his straining stomach, and for a few minutes it was mildly painful, making Cecil wince and bite his lip. But his body handled it, and soon enough his innards had settled, the corpse fully contained within his stomach, immersed in the thick soup of her predecessor.

He bit back a moan. His mind was a haze of gluttonous pleasure, vacant of any coherent thought. His body forced a powerful belch, relieving, though only slightly, some of the pressure inside. His hands went to his belly and felt skin instead of fabric; his garment, for all its elasticity, had not been able to sustain such a significant distension, and had ridden up over his full belly almost to his chest. The fact that Carlos was waiting for him outside seemed distant, almost forgotten. Cecil felt powerless to do anything other than lay back on the floor and slip into an almost comatose sleep while his digestive system processed his feast, and he promptly did so, sprawled supine on his back, swollen belly stretching a little further toward the ceiling with each shallow inhale.

Carlos, waiting in the jeep, was not quite sure when he should start being concerned that something may have gone awry; he had not timed yesterday’s call, but he was sure they had not been inside the base for more than an hour. Now, almost two hours had passed, dusk was falling, and still Cecil didn’t reappear at the door. Not only was Carlos worried that something may have gone wrong, but he also couldn’t say he felt safe alone in the jeep with the dark coming on, even with the armed door sentry not twenty feet away.

He had nearly resolved to go inside when he saw a man emerging from the building. It wasn’t Cecil; it was one of the humans. Carlos watched with curious apprehension as the man approached the jeep and stopped beside it, face to face with Carlos. The man pulled down the makeshift mask that covered the lower half of his face and said, “You responsible for the corpse-eater?”

“Yes,” said Carlos, frowning in confusion. “Is – is he okay?”

The man snorted. “I don’t know how much you feed those things, but seems like it ate itself into a coma. Hasn’t moved since it finished eating. The snoring’s starting to agitate the sick ones.”

Carlos winced. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, unsure what else he could say. “I’d better come in and get him.” He quickly clambered out of the jeep.

“If you’re going to come in there, you’d better put this on,” the man told him, producing from his coat pocket a spare face covering made of ragged cloth. “Unless they’ve managed to make you all immune to shaking sickness, while the rest of us are dying out here.”

Carlos assured him that they hadn’t and accepted the mask with a word of thanks, tying it around the back of his head and adjusting it to cover his nose and mouth. Thus protected, he followed the man into the building, and then down its dark interior hallways.

He felt gazes on him as he passed, and hoped that his white lab coat wouldn’t give false hope to the sick who might believe that some kind of doctor had been sent to save them. He kept his head down and followed the man in front of him until they reached the room which housed the most afflicted patients, and when he looked up, he immediately saw Cecil, lying on the ground at the foot of one of the tables, sound asleep and bloated as a tick. 

Carlos looked over his shoulder to give an apologetic look to his guide as he knelt down beside Cecil, but the man was no longer looking at him; along with an uninfected woman, he had returned to nursing the sick, trying to ease their convulsions and quiet their babbling. Wincing at his inability to do anything to help them, Carlos turned his attention to Cecil, shaking his arm gently. This proved ineffectual in rousing Cecil, and Carlos tried shaking him harder; when that too failed, pinching him, on the arm first and then on the nearest tentacle; none of this produced any effect, except that Cecil seemed, if anything, to snore louder. His mouth fell open, exposing curved sharp teeth, and a dribble of drool came snaking down the side of his chin. Carlos sighed in frustration, and tried a different tactic: he placed the flat of his hand atop Cecil’s stuffed belly and pressed down, gently at first, but with more force when the initial pressure elicited no reaction but a gurgle from within. Cecil squirmed slightly in his sleep, making a soft whimpering sound, until finally a rich, deep belch forced its way up his gullet, and his eyes fluttered open with a dizzy, startled look.

His eyes seemed to struggle to focus on Carlos, and when they finally did, a silly grin plastered itself across his face. “Carlooooos,” he crooned, with a hiccup that made his whole body convulse slightly, “Where’ve you been?”

“Outside,” said Carlos, raising his brows. He watched as Cecil’s eyes seemed to go in and out of focus on his face. If he hadn’t known better, he would have believed Cecil was drunk, or drugged. “Waiting for you. You never came back out.”

“Oh – _hic_ – that’s right,” Cecil slurred. “I was too full… I’m so full.” He whimpered, but it seemed to Carlos that it was a whimper of pleasure, not of pain.

“Do you think you can move now?”

Cecil burped. “No, I don’t think so… I think I’m going to need a good long sleep before I go anywhere… and Carlos?”

“Yeah?”

Cecil lifted a hand just enough to gesture that Carlos should lean in closer. Carlos was hesitant to comply, but after a moment’s reluctance, he leaned down, turning his ear to Cecil’s mouth since Cecil seemed to be indicating that he wanted to whisper something to him.

Cecil’s breath was hot and wet in Carlos’s ear. “I think we should stay here,” he whispered, “All the – _hic_ – people in this room, none of them are going to make it. It’ll be a _feast_ , Carlos, ohhh, what a feast.”

Carlos’s first reaction was one of disgust at Cecil’s gluttony, but after a moment’s thought, he had to acknowledge that Cecil probably had a point. There were likely going to be a considerable number of deaths here in the coming days; it would save resources, chiefly time and fuel, if Cecil stayed instead of driving back only to be dispatched again to the same location in a day or two. He didn’t know the protocol on this sort of situation, though.

“Please, Carlos?” Cecil continued in a low whine. “Can I have them?”

“I’d have to call it in and ask,” Carlos equivocated after a moment’s thought. 

Cecil did not seem to be paying attention anymore, though; his hands had moved to massage the sides of his belly, and based on his blissful moans, fluttering eyelids, and curling tentacles, Carlos judged that he was either very much enjoying his present overfed condition, fantasizing about glutting himself on the rest of the patients, or some combination thereof. But after a few minutes of this, Cecil quieted and his eyes rolled back, his jaw slackening and falling open again as he succumbed once more to the oblivion of sleep, his gut groaning softly.


	3. The Infected Base

As Cecil snoozed, Carlos sent in the explanation of the situation and his request for instructions. He was surprised by the promptness of the response, and the lack of equivocation therein: he was told that, yes, Cecil should remain, and Carlos with him, until the infection had died down and there were no more deaths. Carlos inquired as to how he was supposed to look after _himself_ during this undefined period of time, having brought no food or supplies with him. The response he received was that he must inform the people of the location that it was their civic duty to supply him with food and shelter during their stay. _Great,_ Carlos thought sourly, _I bring a monster to feast on their dead, and then I have to ask them to give me their precious resources, while I do nothing to help the sick._ Perhaps he could try to do something on that last front, he thought. He might not be a doctor, but he was a scientist, and he could study the sick to see if there was anything he could puzzle out about arresting the progress of the disease. That, at least, would make him feel useful.

            Thus resolved, Carlos stood and sought out the two nurses to explain the situation – that Cecil would be staying to take care of their dead, and Carlos to look after Cecil and, he hoped, to see if there was anything he could do for the sick. He added apologetically that he would need food and lodging during this time, though Cecil would need none. The nurses merely nodded, with no sign of ill will or bitterness toward Carlos, which relieved him. He asked if he might be allowed to start examining the sick right away, to see if there was anything he could do to help, and they consented to that – not hopefully, but in a way that suggested they were at least grateful for the pretense.

            So Carlos bent over shaking, crying patients for the remainder of the evening as Cecil slept soundly on the floor. Near midnight, his hosts took a modest repast, and gave Carlos a portion. They retired to the hall to eat, since it required moving the mask away from the face at least slightly to get food to the mouth, and they wanted to reduce the risk of exposing themselves to the sickness. Neither the man nor the woman spoke during the respite, and Carlos couldn’t think of anything to say to them that wouldn’t sound silly or patronizing, so he stayed silent too, quietly chewing his canned beans and yams, all the while feeling as though he was stealing it from them. Soon, after another round of checking on the patients and trying to get them to drink water, the nurses went to their beds – small pallets in the corner of the sickroom. Carlos was given a blanket to spread out on the floor beside them, and he felt no need to ask for more, feeling that even this meager offering was generous enough.

            The next day, Cecil was awake, and seemed determined to hover near Carlos all day, talking incessantly about this and that; his low voice was actually soothing, especially in contrast to the senseless babbling of the patients, and so Carlos would not have minded Cecil’s chatter, if it wasn’t for how often he asked which patients Carlos thought were likely to die soon, and his speculations on which ones would make the best meals. Carlos couldn’t believe Cecil could be thinking about that already, with his stomach still so clearly full, gurgling and hard at work on its last meal, but apparently Cecil’s appetite was not limited by his body’s actual capacity. Carlos’s only respites came when Cecil left his side to nap, which thankfully was quite a frequent occurrence. He would curl up on the blanket Carlos had been given, rubbing his belly, burping softly and humming in contentment until he put himself to sleep.

            It wasn’t until the next morning in the early hours that one of the patients passed away, and Cecil promptly and cheerfully ate him. The two tables that had been vacated were both refilled that day with others whose sickness had progressed to its later stages, a prospect which seemed very agreeable to Cecil. Carlos, for his part, found the whole situation sickening: knowing that there was really no way to help these people, and that they were all destined for Cecil’s bottomless pit of a stomach. He tried his utmost to find some way to help the ill, but it seemed obvious after a few days that there was nothing to be done once the sickness had reached this stage. Day after day, he watched patient after patient go still, and subsequently disappear down Cecil’s throat. He decided his efforts would be better spent studying those who were in earlier stages of the illness, when there was still a possibility of arresting its trajectory, and this endeavor took Carlos out of the sickbay and out among the rest of the people living there. He left the sickbay to the nurses, who patiently but hopelessly looked after the patients during their final days, and to Cecil, who gorged himself, without shame or restraint, on the patients as they died.

            Carlos was relieved to find that he had more success helping those who were in the earlier stages of the illness to recover. With plenty of water, lots of rest, and meals administered at strictly regular intervals throughout the day, most of those who only had the first signs of tremors were able to recover full health within a few days’ time, and so long as those who were as yet uninfected kept their nose and mouth covered at all times, the infection did not spread. Carlos still thought despairingly of those who were too far gone, but he was confident that the rest of the population could be saved, the epidemic snuffed out.

            Though Carlos spent his days as far from the sickbay as he could, he still slept there at night, on the floor beside the nurses’ pallets. Cecil seemed to sleep a bit closer to him every night, until Carlos began to find tentacles draped over him when he woke. One morning about two weeks since they had arrived, Cecil had encroached so far upon Carlos’s space that he woke to the feeling of Cecil’s breath on the back of his neck, and realized with a start that he could feel Cecil’s rounded belly brushing against his back every few seconds as Cecil inhaled. Carlos winced and shifted away, carefully extricating himself from the several tentacles that had slithered over him while he slept, some of which had twined around his arms, holding onto them gently but firmly like a child clutching a teddy bear in its sleep.

            When Carlos had gotten the last of the tentacles off of him, he realized that, careful though he had been, he had woken Cecil, who blinked slowly and yawned. He sat up, surveying the room briefly, no doubt checking to see whether any of the patients had died in the night, or else which ones looked close to death. Carlos watched Cecil appreciatively pat his well-fed belly, noticing the give beneath Cecil’s hand as he did so; this substantial diet – a full meal very nearly every day – was fattening him up, it seemed. After a moment, his gaze turned to Carlos, and he smiled.

            “Good morning, Carlos,” he said cheerfully. “Did you sleep well?”

            Carlos had not slept well; the hard floor made his back ache more fiercely every night, and his mind was troubled with dreams. Dreams that often featured a hungrily gaping maw. “All right,” he lied with a feeble smile, which he quickly gave up when he realized that his mask hid his mouth anyway. “You?”

            “So well,” Cecil purred. “I could stay like this forever.” He leaned back and rubbed his belly with one hand, pulling a fresh gurgle from within and eliciting a quiet hiccup, followed by a contented sigh.

            Irritation welled up in Carlos. “You want these people to keep dying?” he snapped. “You want them to keep getting sick so you can keep stuffing yourself silly?”

            Cecil looked abashed and taken aback by Carlos’s outburst, and was quiet for a moment before he said, “I’m just doing my job, Carlos.”

            “Is that all? Because it doesn’t seem like it. It seems like you’re _eager_ for more people to die. Don’t you remember what you said to me when I first came in, about what a _feast_ all these people would be for you? Was your _job_ your main concern _then?_ ”

            Cecil lowered his head like a kicked dog. “I like to eat,” he said slowly. “I have a big appetite, I can’t help it. I didn’t know it bothered you. I’m sorry I disgust you so much.”

            Carlos took a deep breath. “You don’t disgust me,” he said after a long moment. “Cecil, it’s just… these are _people_. I know they’re food to you, but it wouldn’t hurt to show a little respect.” Carlos heard something shift behind him, and realized abruptly that the nurses on the pallets behind him were awake, listening to their words.

            Cecil looked from Carlos to the nurses and back, then abruptly stood, his tentacles curled into tight coils like so many angry fists, and marched away, out of the sickroom. Carlos didn’t follow; he would let Cecil pout.

            Carlos stayed in the sickbay that morning, helping the nurses tend the patients. Thankfully, neither of the nurses chose to bring up the words Carlos had exchanged with Cecil, nor did they ask Carlos why he didn’t go looking for him. But in the mid-afternoon, when Carlos and the nurses returned from taking their meager lunchtime repast, they found one of the patients dead. Carlos was somewhat surprised Cecil hadn’t returned yet – he had expected that it wouldn’t take long for him to come check whether there was a meal for him. Now that there was one, Carlos decided he had better go find him, wherever he had gone to sulk.

            He patrolled the building, checking each room in search of Cecil. It took him some half of an hour to find him, curled up as he was in the darkest corner he could find at the end of a dead-end hallway. Carlos saw the flash of his pinkish irises in the darkness before they were sulkily lowered. “Cecil, another one of the patients has passed away,” Carlos told him, trying to keep his tone indifferent.

            “Oh?” said Cecil with affected ambivalence. “Is that so.” He made no move to get up.

            “Yes. Come on – you need to take care of the body. They may need the table for another patient.”

            “Not hungry,” said Cecil coldly.

            Carlos sighed in frustration. “Look, I’m sorry. I was harsh with you. These past couple of weeks have been hard on me. I took it out on you.”

            “But you still meant everything that you said. You think I have no respect for humans. You think I’m a glutton – well, here’s a news update: I was _made_ to be one.”

            “You’re right,” said Carlos after a moment’s quiet consideration. “I was out of line. Your nature isn’t your fault. You’re not doing anything bad; you’re doing a service for the community, and so what if you enjoy doing it? It’s not as if you’re hurting anyone. You’re not the one that killed them.”

            “Right,” Cecil said, after a slightly troubled pause.

            “I don’t know enough about you to be judging you that way,” Carlos continued in earnest. “I’m a scientist – I should know better than that, I should be objective. And from now on, I will be,” he added with resolve.

            “I really don’t disgust you, then?” Cecil said, brightening.

            “You really don’t.”

            Cecil sprang to his feet like a cork. “I think my appetite’s come back,” he said with a sheepish grin.

            “Good,” said Carlos, offering a smile of his own, which reached his eyes though it was hidden by his mask, and he turned to head back to the sickbay with Cecil.

            The next few days were considerably pleasanter. Carlos felt as though the tension had diffused somewhat, both because the sickness seemed to be nearing its end, and because of his improving openness and friendliness with Cecil. He no longer minded so much when he woke up with tentacles wound around his arms or a warm belly against his back. And Cecil, for his part, seemed to have checked his gluttony; he still diligently ate the patients as they died, but considerably dialed back his expressions of pleasure in the act, for Carlos’s benefit.

            Finally, nearly three weeks after their arrival, the day came when there were no more patients in the sickroom, and life seemed ready to return to its normal course for the people who had survived the outbreak. Carlos called in to let his superiors know that he and Cecil would be returning, and after receiving confirmation and approval, he bid farewell to the nurses who had been his frequent companions for the past weeks; they both looked strained and exhausted, yet still pleased and relieved that more than three quarters of their community’s population had been able to survive the outbreak in the end.

            Carlos felt as though all the exhaustion of the stresses of the past three weeks was hitting him at once as he climbed into the driver’s seat of the jeep; its seat, though not very soft, was more supportive than anything he had gotten to rest on in the duration of his stay at the infected base. He found himself wishing that Cecil, who looked quite bright-eyed and awake in the passenger seat, knew how to drive and could switch places with him, but he knew that wasn’t the case. So he yawned, rubbed the fatigue from his eyes, and programmed the GPS to take them back to their own base.

            Carlos lost track of the times he nearly nodded off during the drive. His head would dip gently to one side, his hands going slack on the wheel, until he suddenly jolted back to awareness. Cecil had taken it upon himself to practically narrate their progress, and his low, soothing voice did nothing to help Carlos stay awake. After a few hours, though, Cecil dozed off into his customary afternoon nap, and Carlos was better able to keep his own eyes open when the silence was punctuated by Cecil’s snores.

            When at last he pulled into the vehicle lot and turned the key in the jeep’s ignition, he felt too fatigued to stand. All was still and quiet; it was just beginning to get dark; Cecil was still asleep, but his snoring had trailed off. _I’ll just rest my eyes,_ Carlos thought. _Just for a minute or two. I won’t fall asleep._ And he leaned his head back, yawned, and let his leaden lids fall closed. Within seconds he had succumbed to unconsciousness.

            When Cecil woke up, he was surprised to find the jeep parked; he looked over and saw Carlos sound asleep, his head tilted back and mouth slightly open. He smiled at the sight. Poor Carlos, he had worked himself so hard in the past weeks, Cecil knew, and unlike Cecil he got no tangible reward out of it. Cecil knew they needed to get inside; with darkness nearly fallen, outdoors was becoming an even more dangerous place than usual, but he hesitated at the idea of waking Carlos from his clearly much-needed slumber. After a moment’s thought, Cecil extended his tentacles and began gently, carefully to wind them around Carlos’s body until he had a secure grip, and then, lifting him and transferring him practically into his own lap, Cecil opened the passenger door and slipped out, precious cargo cradled in his tentacles.

            Carlos stirred as Cecil walked through the halls toward his cell. As they reached it, Cecil saw Carlos blink in confusion, saw him start at the position he found himself in. “Carlos, Carlos, I’ve got you,” he hastened to assure in soothing tones.

            These words seemed to have a rather opposite effect than what Cecil had intended; Carlos began to tremble, his eyes glazed as if he were in a nightmare rather than fully conscious. “Don’t!” he exclaimed, trying to wriggle free of the tentacles that gripped him.

            Cecil put Carlos down as gently as he could on his pallet, quickly untwining his tentacles as Carlos batted them away. “Don’t what?” said Cecil in genuine puzzlement.

            Carlos sat up, shaking his head and blinking as the cloudiness of sleep cleared away from his eyes. “Nothing,” he said huskily after a moment’s silence. “I was having a bad dream.”

            “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Cecil, “I just didn’t want to wake you up… You looked so peaceful, but if you were actually having a nightmare, I guess I really _should’ve_ woken you up.”

            Carlos nodded, choosing not to mention that the “nightmare” had not begun until he realized he was helplessly entangled in Cecil’s tentacles.

            “You should go back to sleep – you need it,” Cecil said, smiling at Carlos warmly.

            Carlos sighed and nodded. “I will. I just need to get you in your cage first, and then I will.”

            Cecil’s face fell. “You’re going to lock me in?”

            “Well, of course,” said Carlos, frowning.

            “I was never locked in anywhere while we were away, and I was fine.” Cecil thought wistfully of the nights spent sleeping near enough to Carlos to smell him, to nuzzle gently against his soft hair while he slept.

            “It’s protocol, Cecil, you know that. It has nothing to do with whether I trust you. If management came in here and saw you out of your cage, we’d both get in trouble.”

            “They _never_ come,” Cecil complained. “What do they care?”

            “Cecil,” Carlos sighed, “Come on. If you want me to get some sleep, now, just get in your cage and we can talk about it in the morning.”

            “All right,” Cecil grumbled, pouting as he did as he was bid. Carlos came over and locked the door as Cecil curled up on the floor.

            Carlos went back to his pallet and seemed to drop off into sleep again immediately. Cecil, though, was restless. He could not seem to get comfortable in his usual spot. It felt chillier than he remembered, and he missed the slight cushioning softness of the blanket he had lain on at the infected base. He managed to fall into a light doze for a few hours, but woke before morning. Sighing, he sat up and leaned against the wall, looking at Carlos’s back which was turned to him beyond the cage bars.

            “It’s been a while, listeners.” It was a relief to let his voice enter the void of silence that had been pressing in on him. He was careful to speak softly, though he speculated that as exhausted as Carlos had seemed last night, he probably wouldn’t wake him even if he raised his voice to a normal volume.

            It was true that it probably would not have woken Carlos, had he been asleep. But Carlos had, in fact, woken nearly an hour before, jolted from sleep by a troubling dream whose details he could not remember but that left him shaking and covered in a sheen of cold sweat. He had been close to relaxing again and was beginning to doze off when Cecil’s quiet words pulled him back to full consciousness, and he remained still, doing the only thing he could think to do under the circumstances: listening.

            “I’ve never been away from home for quite so long, and oh, listeners, it was _wonderful._ It was like that myth – you know the one, of a place that existed long ago, where people could eat and eat, as much as they wanted? The _buffet?_ Well, that’s what it was like. Most days a full meal, sometimes _two_ meals in less than a full day! My stomach wasn’t empty once. I’ve never been so satisfied – well. Except for – you know.”

            A brief pause ensued, and Carlos found himself wondering what Cecil could have found even more satisfying than the copious feasting he had done over the past three weeks. He didn’t dare to speculate.

            “But listeners, the food wasn’t even the best part!” Cecil continued, his voice picking up in volume as though, in the excitement of recounting the sojourn, he had forgotten that he was trying not to wake Carlos. “If you can believe it, there was something even better. I got to spend so much time around Carlos! Perfect, gorgeous, sweet Carlos. I even got to sleep next to him at night. You would not believe how great he smells. We did have a little, um, I don’t know what to call it – disagreement’s a pretty strong word, right? Well. Anyway, I don’t blame him. And if it’s possible, he gets even more handsome when he’s mad – oh, maybe not _more_ handsome, but equally handsome in a new way.”

            This gushing continued for some minutes, and Carlos felt his face heat as he listened. He had noticed, of course, that Cecil seemed partial to him, but he had thought this must just be an operative’s normal dependency on and attachment to its handler; now, though, it seemed clear that Cecil had what Carlos could only term _a crush_ on him. He had not thought about whether Cecil was even capable of romantic sentiments, but the words he was hearing now seemed to deliver a resounding affirmative. Carlos wasn’t sure how to feel about being the target of Cecil’s affections. On the one hand, perhaps it meant that his fears, conscious and subconscious, of ending up as Cecil’s meal were utterly unfounded. On the other, it opened up a wide range of other issues that would complicate their working relationship. Did Cecil actually think that getting romantically involved with his handler was possible? And would he be disappointed, or even angry, if he voiced his affections when he knew Carlos was awake and listening, and Carlos had no choice but to rebuff him? He would have to rebuff him, of course. There was no way management would ever allow such a thing to occur. Carlos didn’t allow himself to speculate on what his reaction might be if it wasn’t for that fact – the mere thought of it awakened too many confusing feelings.

            As Carlos’s thoughts were thrown into turmoil, Cecil continued to speak, his voice low and calm. The excited timbre and slightly higher pitch it had attained when he had been gushing over Carlos subsided into something deep and almost melancholy. “It was all so wonderful… but everything wonderful has to end sometime, and I’m afraid that it _has_ ended. I’ll be back on the regular feeding schedule now. Back to cravings and waiting around for calls and long drives on an empty stomach. Worse, this cage is between me and Carlos again, and listeners, I almost feel… I almost feel as if he’s _glad_ it’s there.” Carlos could hear the emotion in the words, and it made his heart clench. “Oh, what wouldn’t I give to lie next to him again – to have him _choose_ to lie next to _me!_ ” There was a long pause, and Carlos heard Cecil sigh heavily. Then, more brusquely: “But we so rarely get what we want, no matter what we think we’re willing to give. And other times we find out that we weren’t willing to give what we thought we were after it is too late to get it back. And I… I have nothing to offer him. Nothing but this, myself, and he has made it clear how he feels about what I am – about what my body does to other bodies.” Carlos made out the quiet sound of Cecil patting his belly. “I’m thankful that he says I don’t disgust him, but I know that I still do. I probably always will. And no one wants someone… some _thing_ … they’re disgusted by. I’ll just have to make my peace with that. You can help me with that. I’m sure it won’t be long before I talk to you again, but for now, goodnight, listeners… goodnight.”


	4. The Dark Pool

It took a while for Carlos to get back to sleep, his mind a whir of confusion in the silence that ensued when Cecil had stopped speaking. But when fatigue finally won out and he eased into unconsciousness, no dreams troubled him.

            The next few weeks were a confusing time for Carlos. He and Cecil settled into the routine of every-other-day calls (Cecil had been right about them putting him back on the regular feeding schedule), driving out to the given locations for Cecil to feed on the on-days, staying in with Carlos giving Cecil his regular physical exams on the off ones. For the first week or so after hearing Cecil talk so affectionately about him, Carlos found heat rising in his cheeks when he leaned in to touch Cecil for his exams, and he steadfastly kept his head down, fearing that if he looked up for even a moment, Cecil might notice his blush. His embarrassment faded as he grew accustomed to it, but he would still only meet Cecil’s bright eyes fleetingly during the exams, and he would never give Cecil’s throat more than a cursory inspection with the flashlight so that he could avoid Cecil’s gaze again as quickly as possible.

            Cecil’s stomach – watching Cecil cram corpses into it, hearing and observing those corpses digesting, the feel of it under his hands when he examined Cecil – no longer made Carlos quite as uncomfortable as it had. Perhaps knowing the sort of feelings Cecil nursed for him had indeed assuaged his fears somewhat; perhaps being in proximity to it for some time now had just normalized it for Carlos. Either way, he was glad that sitting next to Cecil with a belly full of dead body in the jeep no longer induced the same queasy sensation of imminent panic. In fact, now, it gave him a sense of satisfaction to see Cecil’s hands cradling the heavy bulge in his middle, to hear a long, rich gurgle emanate from within his bloated gut. After all, it meant a job well done – a body cleaned up, safer civilians. But Carlos had to admit to himself that it wasn’t only that; it brought him satisfaction, too, to see the contented smile that curled Cecil’s lips after a meal, to see him pat his sated stomach and belch softly, sighing with pleasure. He knew how much Cecil enjoyed eating, and increasingly as the days and weeks passed, Carlos found himself wanting to see Cecil enjoy himself.

            And eating wasn’t the only way Carlos imagined Cecil might enjoy himself. Unbidden, erotic thoughts featuring Cecil began to crop up in Carlos’s head when he laid on his pallet in the dark cell at night. He thought of the caress of not just two hands, but six tentacles as well, and felt heat flood his groin. He thought of sharp teeth grazing his throat, his shoulders, his chest, and felt himself getting hard. He couldn’t keep his hand out of his pants when he thought of Cecil grinding against him, and even though he was pretty certain that Cecil was asleep in his cage, he turned toward the wall and pulled his threadbare blanket up to make sure there was no way Cecil could notice him stroking himself. Carlos’s imagination took the fantasy down several filthy avenues, but of all things, it was the thought of Cecil’s belly pressing against him, warm and rounded and full, that sent Carlos over the edge, and he bit his lip to keep from moaning aloud as he unraveled in his hand. Afterwards, he was too ashamed to move, even to clean up, and confusion and embarrassment tainted what should have been post-orgasm bliss. He felt wracked with guilt as he felt his own sticky fluid drying on the blanket and his stomach, even though rationally he knew it was only fantasy and would have to stay that way. He scolded himself for thinking of Cecil that way; Cecil wasn’t even human. (Carlos didn’t dare to admit that that was part of what turned him on in the first place.) It wouldn’t happen again, he promised himself.

            But it did happen again, repeatedly. Sometimes his thoughts were erotic and left him biting back gasps; sometimes they were innocent and surprisingly… domestic. He imagined what it would be like to cuddle with Cecil, remembering the way his tentacles had wound around his arms when Cecil had slept on the floor beside him at the infected base – gentle, but firm. He imagined Cecil resting his head against Carlos’s chest, imagined stroking his peculiar two-toned hair. And he imagined Cecil talking to him, saying those sweet words in that silky baritone of his. It made Carlos’s heart flutter in a way that it hadn’t done in what felt like a very long time.

            And occasionally, at night, when Cecil clearly thought Carlos asleep, Carlos would hear him talking to himself – or rather to his imaginary “listeners.” These soft-spoken monologues would always feature some gentle words about Carlos; Carlos had never heard himself called “perfect” so many times in his life, and it made him feel oddly giddy. Some nights he would stay awake just in the hopes of hearing Cecil, though most of those nights all he heard from the direction of Cecil’s cage was Cecil’s soft snoring and the noises of his gut at work on his most recent meal. But there were a few times when he was rewarded with Cecil’s sonorous tones and words that made him blush despite himself.

            One day, after hearing Cecil soliloquize at length the night before about Carlos’s perfect hair and perfect teeth, Carlos felt himself flush when Cecil hefted himself up onto the exam table for his usual once-over. He couldn’t seem to get the words Cecil had spoken about him out of his head as he put the stethoscope around his neck and laid his palms on the sides of Cecil’s swollen belly. He shook his head and tried to concentrate, tried to push from his mind the knowledge that Cecil was looking at him. He needed to remain professional.

            After weeks of examining his belly every other day, Carlos was much better acquainted with the particularities of Cecil’s digestion. His stomach was, in fact, quite expressive, and Carlos could ascertain a fairly accurate idea of how well Cecil’s body was handling its latest meal based on the feel and sounds of his gut. After a tougher meal – a corpse that had been left to rot for a few days before the call for its cleanup reached them, for instance – Carlos would feel slightly more solidity under his hands, evidence that Cecil’s stomach was having a harder time churning and breaking down the meat, and the gurgles from within would often be thin and protracted, almost whiny. When he had fed on a relatively fresh body, on the other hand, particularly that of a younger person, Carlos could almost always feel that nearly the whole of the corpse had been rendered semiliquid by the time he examined Cecil in the morning, and the noises his stomach made were rich and varied, expressive of its satisfaction with the nourishment.

            Today, Carlos could tell at once that Cecil’s gut was pleased. Yesterday’s meal had been a young man, barely twenty-five, killed by a stray gunshot to the head. The wound had killed him instantly, and aside from his ruined skull and splattered brain, his body had been in prime condition and was still fresh when Cecil and Carlos had arrived to take the call. “Still warm,” Cecil had remarked with delight as he had pulled the body to himself, and it was clear now that that freshness was well appreciated by his digestive tract. His belly gave beneath Carlos’s hands, indicative of the nutritious slurry its occupant had become, and the pressure of Carlos’s probing touch elicited a deep, clearly satisfied belch from Cecil. “Good meal, huh?” said Carlos, almost without thinking.

            “Uh – yeah,” said Cecil, rather taken aback, since Carlos was usually quiet during his exams, and he had certainly never asked after Cecil’s opinion of a meal. He opened his mouth to say more, but remembered Carlos’s look of disgust at the infected base, his harsh words, and thought better of it.

            Carlos nodded. “Good.”

            Cecil blushed at the idea that Carlos cared whether or not he was enjoying his food. What was more, Carlos had stopped just pressing his hands against Cecil’s belly the way he usually did, and was skimming his palms over the skin in a way that made Cecil shiver. Then he was rubbing it and patting it gently, almost reverently. “That… that – _urp_ – feels good,” Cecil admitted guardedly, not sure whether this belly rub had some kind of scientific purpose behind it.

            “I’m glad,” was all Carlos said in reply. He slid his hands around the curvature of Cecil’s belly until they were underneath it, and he hefted it up, testing its weight. “It’s so _heavy_ , Cecil,” he remarked, oddly breathily, Cecil thought. “Isn’t it uncomfortable?”

            “No… I like it. It means I’m full. Well-fed.” As Cecil spoke, looking down at Carlos, he couldn’t help noticing a certain anomaly at the front of Carlos’s pants. Carlos seemed to notice the direction of Cecil’s gaze and turned away with a sound Cecil could only characterize as alarm. “Carlos, what’s wrong? Was it something I said?” he asked in genuine concern and confusion, watching as Carlos crossed to the other side of the room as if in a hurry to get as far away from Cecil as possible.

            “N-no…” Carlos spluttered, facing the wall. “Well, actually… I guess it _is_ something you said. It’s – it’s what you’ve been saying at night, Cecil…”

            Cecil’s heart missed a beat. “You’ve been listening?”

            “Well, yeah! The things you say about me, do you… do you really mean them?”

            “Of course I do, but I’m sorry, I should have been quieter, I didn’t –”

            Carlos turned around. “No, don’t be sorry. I liked hearing those things, I…” He bit his lip, and Cecil could see the blush darkening the brown skin of Carlos’s cheeks. “It made me start to see you differently, knowing how you felt about me.”

            Cecil was speechless for once, and blinked at Carlos mutely.

            “I’m attracted to you,” Carlos clarified, rubbing the back of his neck self-consciously as he made the confession.

            “What does that mean exactly?” Cecil said, his voice a few octaves higher than normal. He had dreamed of such a moment, of course, but now that it had miraculously materialized, he found himself nervous, confused. His fantasies of romance were based on what he had observed in humans he had seen on locations; he had witnessed hugging, hand-holding, and even kissing – that strange ritual wherein humans put their mouths on each other, but beyond that he was not sure what exactly went into being a human’s mate. He was also well aware that nearly all the displays he had seen were tempered by grief, since he was only around the humans when one of their own had recently died. What if the behaviors were dependent on the circumstances? Surely Cecil would do something wrong and he would ruin it; Carlos wouldn’t want him anymore. That would almost be worse than if Carlos had never returned his feelings at all.

            “It means I want to be with you,” Carlos said, which Cecil didn’t find terribly illuminating.

            “You’re with me all the time, every day,” said Cecil, frowning in confusion, his tentacles curled up in nervous coils around him.

            “No, I mean…” Carlos suddenly realized how dense he was being; of course it made sense that Cecil wouldn’t exactly have experience with this sort of thing. His closest relationships in life had been with his handlers, and given that Cecil never even mentioned the handlers he had had before Carlos, Carlos felt it was safe to assume that they hadn’t been all that emotionally bonded. He thought back on Cecil’s words, trying to think of a way to put it in terms that Cecil might better understand. “It means I want to lie next to you at night. It means I would choose to lie next to you.”

            Cecil gave a soft “oh,” and his eyes became so bright that Carlos thought they must be welling with tears. He lifted his arms, as well as all of his tentacles, reaching out for Carlos like a child, and Carlos crossed the cell and walked into them, slipping his arms around Cecil, feeling eight limbs tentatively embrace him in return. Carlos could feel Cecil trembling slightly in his arms, and it took him a moment to realize that Cecil was weeping silently into Carlos’s shoulder. It hit Carlos then: the heartrending realization that Cecil had never been loved before. No one had ever told him that they wanted to be with him, that they wanted _him._ No one had ever told him that _he_ was perfect.

            Touched more deeply with pity and compassion than he thought possible, Carlos held Cecil as the sobs wracked silently through his body, and when they began to subside, he pulled back slightly to ever so gently kiss away the tears from Cecil’s cheeks. Cecil didn’t react at first, but after a few moments he tilted his chin up so that Carlos’s lips met his own instead of his cheek. It was the briefest of kisses, barely a brush of their lips against each other, and Cecil quickly pulled back and cast his eyes down, his cheeks bright pink. “It’s okay,” said Carlos quietly, intuitively understanding that Cecil was unsure whether what he was doing was right. “You can kiss me.” To prove it was so, he leaned in and pressed his mouth to Cecil’s.

            Carlos’s lips parted first, and Cecil followed suit. Carlos immediately tasted the raw-meat tang of Cecil’s acrid breath, and though it made him wince for a moment, he was careful not to pull away. Cecil began to kiss him more fervently, his tongue probing Carlos’s mouth, and Carlos felt tentacles winding around his upper arms, his thighs. He felt Cecil’s mouth part wider, wider, until it nearly enveloped the lower half of Carlos’s face, and with a mixture of concern and alarm Carlos pushed him away, wiping Cecil’s sticky saliva from his chin on his lab coat sleeve.

            Cecil immediately looked abashed, which dispelled any fear that may have been blossoming in Carlos’s chest. “I did it wrong, didn’t I? Oh, Carlos, I’m sorry, I just don’t know how…” He tried his best not to lick his lips, figuring Carlos would not appreciate the indication of how good his skin had tasted to Cecil.

            “It’s okay, it’s fine,” said Carlos, surprised to find himself laughing a little at the absurdity of it. “Just don’t open your mouth that wide, okay?”

            Cecil nodded. “Right. Okay.” He bit his lip. “Why do humans do this?”

            “Why do we kiss?” said Carlos, taken aback. “Well… to be close to each other, to be affectionate with each other. And because it feels good, I guess.”

            Cecil nodded pensively. “I’ll have to work on it.”

            Carlos smiled, but he was troubled. Both his arousal and the intensity of emotion had subsided to a far more manageable level, and as a result he was beginning to think of what a mess he was getting himself into. Who knew _what_ management would do if they found out about this. They certainly wouldn’t let Carlos be Cecil’s handler anymore, and that was the _least_ they were likely to do. “Cecil,” he said, snapping Cecil out of a contemplative reverie on the mysteries of kissing, “You know this has to be a secret, right? Just between us.”

            Cecil blinked. “Who would I tell?”

            “I don’t even think you should tell your – your listeners about it.” Carlos had no idea what sort of monitoring management might have implemented to keep an eye on both its operatives and their handlers, but he certainly didn’t want Cecil to give the walls a detailed account of his kiss with Carlos, only to learn that management had been listening with rapt attention. He supposed that if that was so it might be moot anyway, since management would have observed or heard what had just happened, though he felt that this could be explained away more easily than Cecil expounding in detail in his resonant voice about their blooming relationship and his reciprocated affections.

            “Oh,” Cecil said, blushing. “I’ll try not to.” He was silent for a moment, the quiet gurgle of his stomach the only sound in the cell. Then he looked up and met Carlos’s gaze, his cheeks still flushed. “Um, Carlos… Are you going to finish my exam now?”

            Those words and the look in Cecil’s eyes went straight to Carlos’s groin, but he bit his lip and tried not to think about it. _Not here,_ he thought, _not now. Not when they could be watching._ “No, I think you’re all right for today,” he said, giving Cecil’s belly one more gentle pat. Catching the way Cecil’s eyes flicked down with obvious disappointment, he hastened to add, “I have something in mind for tomorrow, though.”

            And indeed, it was not until the next day that Carlos made any acknowledgment whatsoever of what had passed between them. Despite the hint of something to come, Cecil began to fear that Carlos had somehow forgotten, or worse, had begun to regret the whole thing. He wanted to ask Carlos, but he didn’t dare break the silence as they drove out into the desert to take their call the next day.

            It was only after they had finished with the call and were driving back toward the base, Cecil’s belly heavy with a corpse and his eyelids drooping sleepily, that Carlos said something outside of their normal working exchange. “Do you know of somewhere we can go that’s safe and secluded?” His voice was soft and husky, and his right hand slid off of the steering wheel and brushed Cecil’s fingers so lightly that it sent a shiver up Cecil’s spine.

            Cecil was instantly much more awake. He stifled a burp as he considered Carlos’s question. “Just about everywhere out here is secluded, but safe is harder to find,” he said, his eyes fixed on Carlos’s fingers as they danced lightly over his own.

            “Somewhere… comfortable, then.”

            “Um…” Cecil considered, glancing around to ascertain a better idea of where exactly they were. He had been dozing for much of the drive as his meal began to digest, and thus hadn’t been paying attention to their surroundings. But a quick look at the seemingly featureless scrublands and sand wastes that surrounded them told him all he needed to know. “There’s an oasis,” he said, pointing west with a raised tentacle. “A wide pool of glass-black water, with a single great tree fanning over it with smooth bark the color of gunmetal. I’ve always wanted to stop there, whenever I’ve passed it.”

            “Sounds perfect,” said Carlos, turning the jeep in the direction Cecil indicated.

            Cecil’s heart was fluttering, and his stomach was making brief, wet noises rather than the protracted digestive gurgles it had been emitting minutes before, indicative of his nervousness. His mind raced as he wondered what it was Carlos wanted to do at the oasis. Would they kiss again? If so, Cecil knew it was imperative that he do it right this time. He bit his lip, imagining all the ways it could go wrong. His stomach was so full, what if he couldn’t help but belch while Carlos was trying to kiss him? Surely that would make Carlos recoil in disgust. What if his sharp teeth caught Carlos’s lips and tongue and made him bleed? What if, even if Cecil was able to do it just right, it still didn’t please Carlos? The idea of that scared him perhaps most of all.

            To distract himself, he rubbed his belly with the hand that wasn’t being teased by Carlos’s. His stomach calmed a little at the contact, eliciting a deep long _gluuuurp,_ followed by a few softer gurgles. Even though it had been only two hours or so since he had swallowed down the meal, his stomach and its juices were quick at their work and he could feel how the flesh had softened and began to slough from the bones with the help of his massaging hand and the churn of his gut. The skeleton and the thickest parts of the corpse were still solid, but his relentless stomach would soon see to that, and by late morning tomorrow there would be little more than a rich liquid soup of what had once been skin and muscle, bone and organs, all of which would slowly empty from his stomach to be efficiently absorbed in his lower gut. Sighing contentedly and patting his belly as it gave another rumbling _glrrrrrgl_ , Cecil allowed himself a long, satisfying belch. Better to get it out now, he figured, rather than later when Carlos might want to kiss him.

            It was a little less than an hour before the oasis that Cecil had spoken of appeared in the distance. As they neared it, the water looked as enigmatically black as ever, in spite of the hot afternoon sun, but the shade cast by the wide-fanning tree looked irresistibly inviting. Cecil imagined curling up at its trunk, arms around his belly and Carlos by his side, for a long nap. But as he glanced sidelong at Carlos and saw how quickly his breath was coming, how flushed his cheeks were, he got the impression that Carlos hadn’t brought him here to nap with him. He swallowed a little nervously as Carlos parked the jeep and turned the key, cutting the engine.

            Carlos got out of the jeep and Cecil followed suit, struggling for a moment to find his balance with the heavy weight of his belly. Carlos was standing at the very edge of the wide pool, gazing at the water. “Do you think it’s safe?” he said, without turning around. “To go in, I mean.”

            “I-in the water?” Cecil said hesitantly. Born and raised in this desert, he had rarely even seen enough water in one place for a man to enter into, and when he had the concept of swimming had never even occurred to him. “I don’t know…”

            Carlos picked up a stone and threw it into the center of the pool, watching as the water soundlessly swallowed it in a sea of silky dark ripples. “I guess we won’t know until we’ve tested it for ourselves.” And with that he was undressing, shedding lab coat, flannel, shoes, jeans… Cecil watched in wide-eyed disbelief as more and more beautiful dark bronze skin was revealed to him, watched as Carlos slid off even his socks and his boxers, so that he stood completely naked at the water’s edge, the slightest breeze stirring the hot dry air and making Carlos’s lovely black hair flutter slightly about his ears. Cecil’s eyes hungrily took in Carlos’s broad shoulders, the lightly defined muscles of his back, the sumptuous curve of his ass, his well-shaped thighs and calves, all the way down to the pale soles of his feet as Carlos lifted his foot to test the water with his toes. Cecil could just imagine every inch of that perfect body sliding between his lips, stretching his throat, easing in deeper with swallow after heavenly swallow – but no, no, he couldn’t let himself think of Carlos that way. _Carlos is not food_ , he told himself firmly, despite how the wet welling in his mouth, in spite of all the fullness of his stomach, indicated that his body clearly felt differently. _Carlos is_ not _food._ But as Carlos stepped boldly into the black water, its silent ripples slowly swallowing him up, Cecil couldn’t help wishing he could trade places with that pool, that he could be the one slowly enveloping his Carlos.

            “It feels great,” Carlos said, snapping Cecil out of his forbidden fantasy. “Come in here with me.” He was submerged up to his hips, and as he stilled the water stilled too, the ripples dying away around him and leaving the surface as smooth and obsidian-black as before.

            Cecil swallowed the well of saliva in his mouth. “Okay,” he said, taking a step closer to the water’s edge, testing the feel of it with his bare, callused foot. It was cool to the touch and sent a slight, almost electric shudder through Cecil’s body. He started to take a step further in.

            Carlos shook his head. “Take off your clothes first. You don’t want to get them all wet.”

            Cecil nodded, but his hands trembled a little as he reached down to undress. Surely Carlos could not like what he saw as much as Cecil had. He had taken off his shirt for Carlos’s exams many times, of course, but then it had always been the morning after he had fed, when his belly was smaller, softer, rounder. He had never taken it off for Carlos so soon after feeding, when the various bulges made by the shape of his human meal pressing against his stomach walls were still so visible, stretching his skin. He looked away abashedly as he slid off his upper garment and extracted his tentacles from it, then pulled down his pants and tugged them away from his feet with his tentacles. He tried not to imagine Carlos looking away in disgust.

            When Cecil looked up, he was relieved to see that Carlos’s smile hadn’t faltered, and that the flush in his cheeks had, if anything, deepened. “Come here,” he said, in a voice lower and throatier than his usual tone. Cecil obeyed, wading hesitantly into the water, arms around his belly to help support its weight, tentacles outstretched behind him to keep his balance. The water felt especially good on his tentacles, and he shivered with the cool, invigorating touch of it.

            When Cecil was close enough, Carlos slid his arms around him. They could not meet around Cecil’s back because of Cecil’s full belly, but they rested gently on either side of his gut, Carlos’s hands sitting lightly on Cecil’s hips. Cecil shivered and blushed; Carlos certainly looked like he wanted to kiss him. “You’re going to have to walk me through this,” Cecil told Carlos, moistening his lips nervously. “I’ve never…”

            “I know,” Carlos said softly, leaning in over Cecil’s belly to press a kiss to his neck, just below his chin. Cecil shuddered. Suddenly he was aware that one of Carlos’s hands was no longer on his hip, but had slid down beneath the water, under his belly, and had wrapped around a certain part of him that Cecil had not expected to be touched that way. His eyes widened and his cheeks flushed as he felt himself stiffen there in response to Carlos’s touch. It felt strange, but good.

            After a few minutes of the teasing of Carlos’s hand, Cecil was so hard it almost hurt, and he actually whimpered when Carlos pulled back. “Carlos…” he whined, watching helplessly as Carlos moved away into slightly shallower water. But then Carlos had sunk down to his hands and knees, the water only halfway up his thighs now, and something in the posture made Cecil shudder with desperate anticipation.

Carlos looked at him over his shoulder, his eyes dark with lust. “Here,” he said, touching the place where his thighs, pressed together, met. Cecil understood it as an instruction and shifted to where Carlos wanted, leaning over Carlos with his swollen belly pressing down on Carlos’s back.

The thrust of his hips was natural, instinctual, and Cecil bit his lip and moaned because the feeling of the tight space between Carlos’s thighs, made slick with water, was just what he needed to alleviate the ache Carlos had aroused between his legs. It began to feel so, so good, and in that wash of pleasure it didn’t matter that he was panting and sweating and that the rough press of his belly against Carlos’s back made him belch with practically every other thrust. His tentacles wrapped around Carlos’s arms, his hands grasping desperately at Carlos’s hips as a final thrust sent him over the precipice of ecstatic pleasure. When he was spent he fell back, panting, his mind a comfortably blank haze.

Carlos slid over to his side, stirring ripples in the water. “Was that okay?” he said softly, kissing Cecil’s shoulder.

Cecil swallowed, catching his breath. “More than okay…”

“Good.” He kissed along Cecil’s collarbone for a few moments before he said, “Would you mind doing something like that for me, now?” Cecil felt Carlos press against his thigh beneath the water, felt that Carlos was as hard as he had been a few minutes ago.

“Of course not,” he said, eager to do anything that would grant Carlos the same pleasure that Carlos had just given him. “What do you want me to do?”

“All you have to do,” said Carlos, between kisses, “is open your mouth.”

Cecil could definitely do that. He opened his jaws, but didn’t unhinge them; even so, his mouth could yawn wider than most humans’ probably could. His eyes widened in surprise as Carlos stood, positioned himself in front of Cecil with one leg on either side of Cecil’s belly, knotted his fingers in Cecil’s hair, and slid that stiff part of him in between Cecil’s open jaws.

Cecil was clueless as to what Carlos wanted him to do, but he certainly knew that he must not bite down. The urge to suck, though, to taste this part of himself that Carlos had offered to Cecil, was strong. He dared to close his lips around Carlos’s base, his nose pressing against the lower part of Carlos’s flat stomach, and let his tongue slide around Carlos. The response was immediate; Carlos gasped and his fingers tightened in Cecil’s hair. That seemed like a good response, so Cecil kept going, sucking and licking, enjoying the opportunity to taste Carlos freely. Carlos’s hips began to buck as Cecil’s had when he had been over Carlos, and the movement pressed Carlos’s member into Cecil’s throat, which made Cecil swallow reflexively; since his lips were already pressed against Carlos’s body, the gulping motion of his gullet couldn’t pull Carlos in any further, but the suction of his tightening throat did seem to have a profound effect on Carlos, who cried out in what Cecil could only hope was pleasure. Only moments later, Cecil felt a warm liquid in his mouth and throat, a salty taste, and then Carlos had pulled away. “Swallow,” he heard Carlos command, and he did, downing the sticky fluid Carlos had put in his mouth in an easy, languid gulp.

Carlos sank back down to his knees, burying his head against Cecil’s chest. He was trembling a little, Cecil felt. “Are you okay? Did I do something wrong?” Cecil said hesitantly, lifting a hand to stroke Carlos’s soft hair.

“No, no!” Carlos lifted his head, and Cecil was relieved to find him smiling. “You were so good, Cecil, oh my _god_. I saw stars.”

“Really?” Cecil returned Carlos’s smile with a relieved sigh. “Thank goodness. I was so afraid I wouldn’t do it right.”

“You shouldn’t have to be afraid of that,” Carlos said. “Even if you didn’t do it right, I wouldn’t care.” He kissed Cecil, on the mouth now; Cecil was careful not to let his jaws part too wide this time. Carlos’s lips and tongue were warm and soft against his, and Cecil hummed in contentment. He could get used to this.

But after a minute or two, Cecil felt his eyelids getting unbearably heavy; the fullness of his stomach and the expenditure of energy with Carlos seemed to be conspiring to make him even more desperate for a nap than he had been before. He pulled back from Carlos with a titanic yawn. “Can we stay a little longer and just rest? I could use –” Another yawn, followed by a burp. “A nap.”

Carlos smiled, but glanced up to see how far the sun had migrated across the sky. Through the limbs of the tree fanned overhead, the sunlight made soft dappled gold patterns on his skin. “Only for a little while. An hour, two at most. We wouldn’t want to be out here once it starts getting dark.”

Cecil nodded his assent, and together they shifted up toward the shore of the pool where they could lay down. The mud around the tree’s roots was soft, damp, and cool, a welcome contrast to the dry heat of the air. As Cecil settled on his side, he felt Carlos lay down just behind him, close enough that Cecil could feel Carlos’s chest and stomach against his back and the places where his tentacles joined it. Carlos slid an arm between Cecil’s tentacles to rest gently atop the side of his belly, and to Cecil’s delight, Carlos’s hand began to rub slow circles against Cecil’s flesh, making his stomach rumble appreciatively. With a belch and a sigh of absolute bliss, Cecil let his eyes fall closed and succumbed to sleep.


	5. The Confession

He had expected that at some point he would be woken by Carlos’s hand or voice gently urging him back to consciousness, and so it was with surprise that he woke naturally some two hours later. It was late evening; the sun was gone, the sky the deep turquoise that preceded the full darkness of night, and the tree’s leaves were rustling and shifting above as the night wind began to rise. He shifted slowly onto his other side, using his tentacles to help with the weight of his belly, and found that Carlos was fast asleep, his head propped up slightly against a root softened with a layer of thick dark moss. It seemed such a shame to wake him, but Cecil knew that they would be in grave danger if they stayed here now that the sun had gone down.

            He raised a hand to touch Carlos’s shoulder, bit his lip, hesitated. What if Carlos acted like nothing had happened once they got back to the base? Who knew how long it might be before he would get the chance to lie beside Carlos again. The sun must have only just gone down; a few more minutes couldn’t hurt, Cecil decided, lowering his hand.

He shifted to lay diagonally relative to Carlos so that his face could be close to Carlos’s without the protrusion of his belly getting in the way or pressing against Carlos and waking him. He could feel Carlos’s breath washing lightly over his face, could smell the salty, musky scent of the dried sweat on his skin. He longed to taste it, to lean in and let his tongue explore every contour of Carlos’s face, from the delicate skin of his eyelids to the firm curve of his cheekbones to the soft lobes of his ears. How exquisite it would feel to worry Carlos’s ears lightly between his teeth! Next time – if there was a next time – Cecil would ask if he could, he decided. After all, if Carlos was willing to put one part of himself in Cecil’s mouth, why not others? He let himself imagine Carlos readily consenting, letting Cecil slurp and suck on and mouth at his ears, his hands, his feet, his thighs. In Cecil’s imagination, Carlos gasped and moaned with pleasure at those ministrations just as much as he had in the pool earlier. Cecil found that the idea began to make him nearly as hard as Carlos’s hand on him had.

It didn’t take long for him to decide that it wouldn’t be a very good idea to try the fantasy in reality, though, even if Carlos were to consent to it. Even imagining it was enough to make his throat ache with the desire to swallow, and it seemed that nothing would deter his imagination from taking the fantasy from innocent intimacy to a one-way trip down his gullet for Carlos. He tried to turn his mind away from it at first, but after promising himself that it was only fantasy and he would never do such a thing to Carlos in real life, he decided to close his eyes and let the fantasy run its course.

He started with Carlos’s feet, sucking on every toe as Carlos writhed and panted with pleasure. Sliding them into his throat only seemed to intensify the imaginary Carlos’s enjoyment of the situation, and he began to encourage Cecil in a voice husky with lust. “Swallow all of me. I want to be inside you.” Cecil hastened to oblige his wish, gulping warm calves, alternating between slow, languid swallows and hastier, more desperate ones, wanting at once to savor and to get all of his Carlos inside him where he belonged. Carlos continued to egg him on as more and more of him disappeared into Cecil’s throat: “That’s it. Deeper. Let me fill you up.” 

And Cecil wanted to so badly. He imagined pulling up and leaning back as Carlos’s hips slid through his jaws, imagined his lower body easing into Cecil’s stomach and stretching it as he continued to gulp at Carlos’s torso, gravity aiding his throat in pulling the meal down. Carlos lifted his arms over his head to ease Cecil’s swallowing, and with a few more thick, desperate gulps he was fully inside him.

In reality, Cecil was panting by this point, dizzy with the fantasy of satisfying two kinds of appetite. He rubbed at his belly, imagining that it was Carlos tucked inside rather than a partially digested corpse. He was unbearably hard now, and remembering how the friction of thrusting between Carlos’s thighs had relieved it, he sought the most convenient friction available to him and let himself thrust against the lower part of his belly, holding it in place with his hands.

The imaginary Carlos seemed quite at home in Cecil’s stomach. When he spoke, Cecil could hear him perfectly, though he knew that if it were reality, Carlos’s voice would be muffled and garbled and undoubtedly panicked, too, as his former handler’s had been after his trip down Cecil’s gullet. “I’m so happy, Cecil. This is how we belong. So close together,” said the imaginary Carlos, and Cecil thought of how much closer together they would get once digestion got underway. “Is there anything I can do to be a better meal for you?” asked Carlos, and Cecil imagined telling him: “Squirm.” And with that thought, of Carlos wriggling obediently in his belly, Cecil came hard enough to understand what Carlos had said earlier about seeing stars.

As he came back to himself and the fantasy faded from behind his eyes, he realized that it was really getting quite dark, and Carlos still hadn’t woken. He would just quickly wash off the sticky fluid he had gotten on his belly, and then he would wake Carlos and they would dress and be on their way, he decided.

He shifted himself to the water’s edge and dipped a hand in the pool. The water felt much colder now than it had earlier, he noted, cold enough to make him shudder when he ladled a palm-full of it over his lower belly. And his hand seemed to be creating an awful lot of ripples, he thought, frowning as he dipped his hand in a second time. He froze as he realized that the majority of the ripples weren’t spreading out from his hand – they were coming in from the center of the pool. Cold dread crawled in his stomach and made the corpse inside roil as he raised his eyes and saw that the center of the pool was _bubbling,_ frothing and churning as though something deep within was boiling. He felt something slimy brush against his hand which was still submerged in the water, and he leapt back with a yelp of dismay, his tentacles rising to circle protectively around his body. “Carlos!” he cried. “Carlos, wake up, we’ve got to _go!_ ”

The fact that Carlos didn’t stir turned the fear tightening Cecil’s chest to abject horror. He leaned over Carlos; he could tell just by looking at him that he was alive, but a closer inspection with his nose revealed a trace of some foreign smell in his breath and on his skin. Something in the water must have put him into this comatose sleep, Cecil realized, something he himself must be immune to. If Carlos wouldn’t wake, he would just have to carry him to safety, he resolved, winding his tentacles about Carlos’s body as hastily as he could. He didn’t dare look over his shoulder as he concentrated on getting a secure grip on Carlos; the bubbling sound had gathered into a thunderous roar, and he felt water splashing against his feet as though something huge was shifting within the pool and making it overflow.

He tried to lift Carlos, but the excess of weight in front of him – the remains of the corpse in his stomach and Carlos before him wrapped in his tentacles – made standing feel like a near-impossible task. Fear twisted his guts again and he tasted the sharp tang of bile at the back of his throat. His body knew what needed to be done. He felt meat rise in his gorge and before he knew it he was vomiting an arm, half a leg, a large chunk of ribcage, all bloody and soft from digestion, splattering against Carlos’s body and Cecil’s tentacles and onto the ground. He felt the slimy touch he had felt against his hand in the water brush against his back, and he sprang to his feet with a sheer force of will even as a thick hunk of organ meat forced itself up his throat and spattered down his chest.

He bolted for the jeep, struggling not to fall over with the imbalance of weight, all the while vomiting up bits and pieces of his meal as his body struggled to rid itself of what was holding him back from escaping. As he shoved Carlos unceremoniously into the passenger seat, he glanced behind him as he clambered into the driver’s side, and saw a looming amorphous black shape lurching, sloshing, roiling out of what had been the serene pool, as if the very mud that had formed its bottom had come to hideous, monstrous life. He glimpsed flashes of something pale within the rolling, shifting mass of it, which at first he mistook for eyes, though he quickly realized that it was exposing pieces of bone. Bone, no doubt, from its victims, which Cecil and Carlos would add to if they didn’t get away from this place. It did not seem bound by the borders of the pool that housed it and was lurching toward the jeep with terrifying speed.

            He had to figure out how to pilot this thing, and quickly. He turned the key – he had observed that part enough to know that that was the first thing that needed to be done – and the jeep roared to life. He moved the lever to his right arbitrarily, then slammed his foot down on the first pedal he felt. The jeep zoomed backwards, nearly colliding with the gargantuan mud-monster, its shadow looming dark and huge above. Cecil pulled the lever again, praying that that would take the jeep out of reverse, and slammed on the pedal again. The jeep zipped forwards this time, sand flying up from its wheels as it accelerated rapidly, and Cecil didn’t look back until the jeep had emerged from the monster’s shadow.

            He watched the monster recede into the distance as he continued to floor the gas pedal, panting and burping nauseously. When it had disappeared over the horizon, he turned his attention to where he was going. He knew the way home, and he didn’t intend to stop, or even decelerate, until he got there. He was going so fast that the jeep went airborne a few times as he went over bumps in the sandy scrubland, and he extended a tentacle across Carlos’s body to make sure he wouldn’t fall out of his seat as he swayed and lurched unconsciously with the vehicle’s motion.

            After what seemed an eternity, Cecil got the jeep into the vehicle lot, crashing into two parked jeeps along the way, tearing the fender off of one and severely denting in the passenger side door on the other. He turned the key without moving the lever, and the car rolled forward until it hit the wall of the base and jolted to a halt.

            He leaned back, panting in exhaustion. He burped, and more corpse guts spilled out of his jaws, flavored with sour bile. Unconsciousness gnawed at the edges of his vision. His eyes rolled back, his head lolled sideways, and his tentacles went limp as he blacked out, slumped naked against the steering wheel.

            Carlos woke slowly, groggily; returning to consciousness felt like swimming slowly to the surface of murky dark water. When he finally opened his eyes, his head was spinning with confusion and there was a throbbing ache behind his eyes. It took him a long moment to register that he was sitting naked in the dark in the passenger seat of the jeep, and an even longer moment to understand that the jeep was somehow back in the vehicle lot. Finally he turned his stiff neck to look around and saw Cecil unconscious in the driver’s seat, draped over the steering wheel, something slimy and fleshy dangling from his lolling jaws.

            “Cecil,” he said, a cold knife of fear slicing through his belly, dispelling a good deal of his grogginess. He reached out to touch Cecil’s arm; his skin felt chilled, and he didn’t stir when Carlos shook him gently. Hastily he moved his fingers to the side of Cecil’s neck, and breathed a heavy sigh of relief when he felt the steady pulse of blood in the vein beside his throat. He prodded cautiously at the flesh dangling from Cecil’s lips; Cecil’s throat loosened abruptly and the flesh spilled free along with a gush of stinking bile. Carlos winced, drawing back instinctively, noticing for the first time the rest of the chunks of flesh on the floor of the jeep and splattered down Cecil’s chest and stomach. He had been vomiting – had vomited up half his meal or more, Carlos judged by the drastically reduced girth of his belly. But why? And how had they gotten back to the base? And whatever had happened, how had Carlos stayed unconscious through it all?

            Regardless of all that he didn’t know, what Carlos did know was that he needed to get Cecil and himself into the safety of indoors. He slid out of the jeep and went around to the other side, opening the driver’s side door and gathering Cecil into his arms as best he could, slipping one arm around his shoulders and the other beneath his thighs. As Carlos lifted him out of the jeep, limp tentacles dangled everywhere, making it difficult for Carlos to maneuver. He didn’t bother trying to shut the door of the jeep, heading straight for the entrance of the base and working to get it open with his shoulder without jostling Cecil too much. Grunting with the effort, he found himself wishing for a few extra limbs of his own. Finally he got inside, but the heavy door slammed shut on one of Cecil’s dragging tentacles, very nearly severing the tip of it before Carlos could pull the door back and yank it free, but even that didn’t rouse Cecil.

            But by the time Carlos had reached Cecil’s cell, Cecil had begun to groan softly and stir in his arms. He considered Cecil’s cage, but he couldn’t bring himself to lay Cecil down on that cold concrete floor, and instead laid him down on his own pallet at the side of the cell, pulling the thin blanket up over him.

            “C-Carlos…” Cecil’s voice was weak and hoarse from vomiting.

            “Shh.” Carlos knelt beside the pallet and brushed white hair away from Cecil’s sticky brow. “Just rest for now, and then, when you feel up to it, tell me what happened.” His curiosity was fierce, but his concern for Cecil’s wellbeing took precedence.

            “The pool,” Cecil choked out, “there was a monster in the pool and you wouldn’t wake up – _hurk_ …” Carlos was forced to move aside as Cecil leaned over the edge of the pallet to vomit a thick sticky mess of organ meat, blood and bile splattering on the concrete floor.

            Carlos stroked Cecil’s hair gently as he laid back on the pallet, breathing ragged. “So you drove us home?” Cecil nodded weakly in response. “That was brave, Cecil. What made you sick? It looks like you’ve thrown up a lot…”

            “I was trying to lift you, but you were too heavy and my belly was too full and I was so scared. It just started to come up. _Urrp._ ” The belch sounded thin and strained, and Carlos could see the nausea on his face.

            “Well, you’re safe now. Will you feel better after you’ve rested for a while?” Carlos slid a hand under the thin blanket rub Cecil’s stomach gently and heard it gurgle unhappily in response.

            Cecil winced. “Regurgitating is hard on my body. Once I get started it can be hard to stop. It probably won’t until my stomach’s empty.” He winced again and raised the tentacle that Carlos had gotten stuck in the door to his face, seeming to notice its nearly severed tip for the first time. Carlos was just about to apologize and suggest that he could try to figure out how to stitch it back on, but before the words could pass his lips, Cecil had reached out with a hand, given the dangling tip a hard yank, and wrenched it entirely off. A thin stream of blood dripped onto the concrete floor, but the wound clotted in a matter of seconds. Looking up and taking note of Carlos’s aghast expression, he hastened to assure him, “Don’t worry, it’ll grow back.”

            “ _Really?_ You can regenerate?” Carlos ran a hand over the surface of another tentacle, gazing at it in admiring fascination. “Can all of your body parts do that, or is it just your tentacles?”

            “Just my tentacles. I have to be a bit more careful with my other extremities. Fortunately there are fewer of them.” He smiled, but Carlos could tell that the talk was not helping with his nausea. His face was still pale and he was swallowing frequently, no doubt forcing down the urge to gag.

            Carlos lifted his hands gently from Cecil and stood. For the first time since he had woken up in the jeep, he took note of the fact that he was naked. He moved over to the desk, opened a drawer, and withdrew underwear, a faded gray t-shirt, and jeans, which he donned. He would have to do without a lab coat until he could get another. He supposed it was only habit that kept him wearing one, anyhow; he didn’t technically need a lab coat now that he didn’t actually work in the lab anymore, but he had worn one for so long that it had practically become part of his identity. “I’ll be right back,” he told Cecil before slipping out into the hall and making for the nearest supply closet. When he found one, he rooted around amongst its jumbled contents until he found a dinted metal bucket and a thick rag that might once have been white. He found a lab coat, too – it wasn’t nearly as nice or as well-kept as the one he had left behind at the pool, but it would do just fine, and he felt much more himself once he had shrugged it on. Then he returned to the cell, placed the bucket on the floor beside the pallet, and used the rag to scoop up the bloody mess of meat Cecil had thrown up on the floor, dropping it into the bucket. He tried very hard not to think about the fact that it was a piece of a person. “If you need to throw up again, try to do it in here, okay?” he said, meeting Cecil’s eyes and indicating the bucket.

            Cecil nodded weakly, giving a strained hiccup. When he spoke, his voice was very soft. “Carlos, could you… hold me? Just for a little while?”

            Carlos hesitated for a second, thinking of the cameras he suspected could be trained on them from some hidden corner at this very moment, but as Cecil hiccupped again and shivered, he softened. “Of course.”

            The pallet really only had room for one, but Carlos carefully climbed in to squeeze into the side closer to the wall so that Cecil would still have access to the bucket. He scrunched in as best he could, pressed hard against the wall on one side and the tangle of Cecil’s tentacles on the other, wriggled under the thin blanket, and wrapped his arm around Cecil, resting his palm gently on the swell of Cecil’s upset stomach. He felt Cecil relax at his closeness, his touch, and that made Carlos feel warm inside, knowing that he had the power to make Cecil feel even a little bit better just by being there for him. “Try to get some sleep,” he murmured into the back of Cecil’s neck. “You might feel better in the morning.” He felt Cecil nod. “And Cecil… thanks. For looking out for me the way you did when I couldn’t look out for myself. I know it must have been pretty harrowing, but now I know for certain that I can trust you with my life.” He kissed the back of Cecil’s head. Cecil didn’t say anything, but Carlos could tell by the way by the way his tentacles writhed for a moment that he was pleased with what Carlos had said.

            Carlos was still quite groggy thanks to the aftereffects of whatever had affected him at the pool, and in spite of his scrunched position he was soon dozing. He was woken several times throughout the night, however, when Cecil would lurch over the edge of the bed to vomit noisily into his bucket. Each time Carlos would wrap his arm more tightly around Cecil, holding him securely as he retched, and then would squeeze his shoulder reassuringly when he fell back to the pallet, panting. Each time Carlos fell back to sleep quite quickly afterwards, but in spite of all the sleep he managed to get, he still felt bone-deep exhausted when morning finally arrived. He was relieved to see that Cecil was asleep, though. He slid a hand down to feel Cecil’s stomach, moving slowly and carefully so as not to jostle and wake him, and felt that Cecil must have, as he had predicted, emptied his stomach over the course of the night; his abdomen was nearly flat beneath Carlos’s palm. He raised himself up as much as he could without disturbing Cecil to peer over him and see the damage, and indeed, the bucket was overflowing with partially-digested meat and broken chunks of bone, the floor all around it covered thickly with the same, along with a widespread pool of bile. Carlos winced at the idea of cleaning all that up. He was pretty sure there was an industrial-strength incinerator somewhere in the building, which he knew wasn’t supposed to receive organics, but surely they would make an exception in this case – and if not, what they didn’t know wouldn’t kill them.

            Carlos managed to very carefully extricate himself from the pallet without waking Cecil, and he set right to work cleaning up the mess. A half hour of poking around in the underground catacombs beneath the primary level of the base and he had found the incinerator. He took the corpse there one bucketful at a time, glad that his own stomach was empty at the moment as discovering identifiable pieces, such as an entire intact lung, among the bloody mess on the floor made his throat thick with nausea.

At last he had emptied the final bucketful of vomited flesh into the incinerator, and when he returned to Cecil’s cell he found that Cecil was awake, sitting on the edge of the pallet with the thin blanket wrapped around his shoulders; his tentacles coiled beneath it made him look like he had a hump on his back. His eyes were glassy, his hair was mussed, and he still looked pale, but altogether none the worse for wear, Carlos was relieved to see. “Morning,” he said as he put down the bucket beside the desk. “How are you feeling?”

“Not terrible, not great,” Cecil equivocated, looking down vacantly at the wide reddish stain on the cement floor where the vomited corpse parts had been before Carlos’s cleaning. “Hungry, mostly.”

“Well, I guess that makes sense. You lost almost all of your meal.”

Cecil nodded. “And regurgitating is hard work. Big energy cost.”

“Unfortunate that it’s an off-day. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow for another meal.”

“I know,” Cecil said with a grimace. “But it’ll be okay. I can be hungry for an extra day. They didn’t feed me for a week after I… that is, before they assigned you to me. After that, this should feel like nothing.”

Carlos nodded. “And maybe I can help it go by faster.” He crossed the cell to sit down beside Cecil on the pallet, and leaned in to kiss Cecil gently, possible surveillance cameras be damned.

Cecil made a sound that Carlos could only compare to a cat purring, and tentacles slithered out from underneath the blanket to wrap around Carlos’s shoulders as Cecil kissed him back and then nuzzled at his ear.

“Since it’s an off-day, I have to examine you,” Carlos said sultrily, sliding his hands over Cecil’s shoulders and down the sides of his body as Cecil’s tongue flicked inside his ear in a way that made every nerve in his body tingle.

“What if I examine _you_ today, hmmm?” Cecil pulled back to show Carlos a wicked, sharp-toothed grin. “How about you climb up on that table and I poke and prod _you_ all over for a change?”

Carlos’s breath caught at that idea. “You want to play the scientist?”

“Uh-huh. And you can be the operative. Take off those clothes – I’m going to put them on.”

Carlos hastened to obey, passing each item of his clothing to Cecil as he stripped it off. Then he watched as Cecil slid on his jeans and pulled the gray t-shirt over his head. His tentacles were forced to bunch up beneath the shirt, though some of them spilled out below the hem, twitching and wriggling in an indication of Cecil’s enjoyment of the game. Finally the lab coat went on, and Cecil stood and did a turn in front of Carlos so Carlos could admire the ensemble. Cecil looked, Carlos was surprised to note, remarkably human in Carlos’s clothes. If it weren’t for the tentacles peeking out the bottom of the lab coat and slithering up around the collar, Carlos probably wouldn’t have given him a second look if he had passed him in one of the hallways of the base. His pupils were dilated at the moment, so the fuchsia of his irises wasn’t as noticeable as usual, and the thin lines of tightly folded elastic skin at either side of his mouth could easily be taken for scars, at a glance.

“How do I look?” said Cecil.

“Human,” said Carlos earnestly.

“Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it? Since I _am_ human. Now get on up on the table so I can do your exam,” Cecil purred, picking up Carlos’s clipboard with one hand and sliding Carlos’s reading glasses onto his nose with the other.

Carlos grinned and padded over to the exam table, hefting himself up to sit on it. The stainless steel surface was cold against his bare skin, and he shivered, more thrillingly aware of his nakedness by the moment. He watched as Cecil picked up a pen and pretended to scribble some notes down on Carlos’s clipboard; he was quite certain that Cecil didn’t know how to write, and the erratic, nonsensical movement of his hand over the paper lent credence to that assumption. Then Cecil put down the clipboard and put on Carlos’s stethoscope, and Carlos realized that Cecil was imitating exactly what Carlos typically did at the start of each of Cecil’s exams. It made him feel oddly self-conscious, knowing that Cecil had been watching him closely enough to be able to mimic his behaviors, but there was something partly hypnotic and partly erotic about the role reversal all the same.

Cecil put the cold metal disc of the stethoscope against Carlos’s abdomen and made a few _hmm_ and _ah_ noises. Carlos wondered what he was hearing. He was sure that his own digestive system couldn’t possibly be as noisy and active as Cecil’s, but he supposed it would be emitting the normal quiet gurgles and maybe a growl or two – after all, he hadn’t eaten since they’d left the base for their call yesterday, and he was, he abruptly realized, very hungry.

After he had listened, Cecil took off the stethoscope and laid his hands on Carlos’s stomach. There was not much there to rub or palpate; Carlos’s stomach was empty and he was thin, probably a little thinner than was healthy, leading to a slight concavity between his ribcage and his hips. “Carlos,” Cecil chided, “your stomach isn’t happy. It needs more food.”

Carlos wondered whether he was supposed to be actively playing a role, but since Cecil had said _you can be the operative_ , he decided he would try it. “I’ll eat when I get a call.”

“Hm, yes, a nice tasty corpse is just what your belly needs.” Cecil’s own stomach gave an audible growl at that, which he chose to pretend had come from Carlos. “See? Your stomach agrees. Now, open your mouth.”

Carlos did, and Cecil peered inside. Apparently he couldn’t resist breaking his character to say, “My, Carlos, what lovely teeth you have, so white and straight and perfect!” but after that he returned to his vaguely scientific _hmms._ After a moment he said seriously, “I’m going to have to get a closer look,” and brought his face so close to Carlos’s that their noses were a hairsbreadth from touching before he smashed their mouths together in a hungry kiss. Carlos melted into the heat of that kiss, willingly letting Cecil push him up against the wall behind the table, moaning like a horny teenager.

After a few minutes of heated kissing, Cecil climbed up on the table, pushing Carlos down onto his back, and Carlos bucked his hips to grind against Cecil’s thigh. Cecil surfaced from their kiss long enough to say, “I have to examine _every inch_ of you,” and then he began to trail open-mouthed kisses down Carlos’s neck, making him gasp and fist his hands in the lab coat Cecil was wearing. Cecil languidly sucked a hickey into the skin above Carlos’s collarbone, then kissed across Carlos’s shoulders and down his chest. As he went, the kisses became more and more open-mouthed and lingering, becoming more licking than kissing, but Carlos was too blissed out to make anything of it. When Cecil lifted Carlos’s hand to suck on his fingers, first one at a time and then all together, Carlos thought he might come from the sensation alone. “Mmmnh,” Cecil moaned around Carlos’s fingers, and Carlos felt the back of Cecil’s throat twitch against his fingertips, as though it was trying to swallow but Cecil was fighting the urge. Some part of Carlos knew that this should be setting off alarm bells in his head, but somehow it just turned him on even more, and he writhed underneath Cecil, panting and desperate for release.

At that moment Cecil’s stomach gave a ferocious growl, and he abruptly spat out Carlos’s hand and climbed off the table, turning his back on Carlos. “No, _no,_ I won’t, I won’t,” Carlos heard Cecil mutter under his breath. “Not him. I won’t.”

“Cecil, what’s wrong?” Carlos sat up on the table, trying to ignore how achingly hard he was. “Talk to me.”

“It’s nothing, sweet Carlos,” Cecil said, wiping the drool from his lips on the lab coat sleeve and turning a strained smile on Carlos. “I just don’t think it’s a very good idea to do this when I’m hungry. It… well, it teases my stomach.”

All Carlos could think about was the fact that Cecil’s stomach wasn’t the only organ that had been teased, and since it didn’t seem like Cecil was going to come back to him, Carlos pumped over himself with the fist that was still slick from Cecil’s saliva.

“Carlos, I… I think there’s something you should know. I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to scare you, or make you hate me, but… _Carlos, are you listening to me?_ ”

“Just a minute,” Carlos ground out through gritted teeth. Finally he came, not nearly as hard as he would have if Cecil had continued his ministrations, he was sure, but at least it was release.

“Now will you listen?” Cecil snapped, clearly annoyed.

“Yes. Yes. Sorry,” Carlos said, “You just kind of left me hanging there, Cecil.”

“Well, sorry, but I’m trying to tell you something important, okay?”

“Right. Go ahead.”

Cecil took a deep, steadying breath. “You know how I told you that my last handler died in an accident.”

Carlos nodded.

“He did die in an accident, but I think you ought to know what kind of accident it was.” He swallowed, staring down at the floor. “Carlos, I… I’m ashamed to admit it, but I accidentally ate him.”

Carlos blinked. “You ate him,” he repeated blankly, unable to wrap his mind around the notion.

“Accidentally,” Cecil clarified.

Carlos felt as though his head was going to explode; this was too much to process. “What the hell, Cecil? How do you _accidentally eat someone?_ Are you telling me he was alive and you swallowed him?”

“Yes, but please, let me explain –”

“You _ate him alive?_ Christ, Cecil, what else is there to explain? You’re telling me you murdered him?!”

“I didn’t mean to!” Cecil cried, his tentacles writhing under the lab coat in his agitation. “Listen, Carlos, he was doing my exam and he stuck his head down my throat and –”

“And you swallowed him. Alive. He must have struggled, why didn’t you stop? Why didn’t you throw him up, for god’s sake?” Carlos felt like he was going to be sick. All the nightmares he had had when he had first become Cecil’s handler, all the dreadful thoughts he had since convinced himself were impossible – and if not impossible, certainly things that gentle Cecil wasn’t capable of – those exact things had befallen his predecessor. And Cecil had the audacity to claim that it had been an accident.

“It was instinct,” Cecil insisted desperately, “Once I start swallowing I just – keep going and – and once he was all the way in I couldn’t regurgitate him, I can’t regurgitate a fully undigested body, it’s too big –”

“You could have cut yourself open, then! Clawed him out of you! You just _let him digest?_ ”

“Stop yelling at me! I told you it was an accident! I’m not proud of it but I can’t go back and undo it, what do you want me to do?”

Carlos was silent for a moment before he said in cold, measured words, “I want you to take off my clothes, and then I want you to get back in your cage.”

Cecil looked like he might cry, but he obeyed, stripping off Carlos’s clothes with trembling hands. Carlos got off the table, scooping up his clothes and putting them back on as Cecil took them off, and then as Cecil shuffled dejectedly into his cage, Carlos slammed the door shut and locked it. Carlos couldn’t bear looking at Cecil; he turned on his heel and headed for the door of the cell.

“Carlos, where are you going? Do you hate me? Carlos!” he heard Cecil calling after him, but he didn’t turn until he had reached the hallway and shut the cell door behind him.


	6. The Records Room

Cecil curled up in the corner of his cage, hating himself. Why did he have to go and tell Carlos that? He should have known that no good could come of it. Why had he been so stupid as to expect that Carlos might understand, that Carlos might forgive him for what he’d done? Carlos was human. Cecil was well aware that in a human’s mind, killing someone who trusted you was considered heinous, inconceivable, unforgivable. He shuddered to think how much Carlos’s revulsion would have deepened if he had gone so far as to confess how much he had _enjoyed_ what had happened to his predecessor. And now, thinking of the look on Carlos’s face as he had said accusingly, disbelievingly, _You ate him alive,_ even the memory of the pleasure became bitter.

What if Carlos didn’t want to be his handler anymore, knowing what he’d done? Cecil could hardly bear the thought. He loved Carlos, had loved him since the moment he laid eyes on him, and the thought of having him taken away now was like imagining having all his vital organs pulled out through his mouth. What if Carlos spoke to management and convinced them that they’d made the wrong choice, that they should have put Cecil down after he had shown that he couldn’t be trusted? But no, he thought, that wasn’t like Carlos. Even if he never wanted to see Cecil again, he wouldn’t go out of his way to have him put to death, surely. Carlos was too gentle for that.

If Carlos wasn’t going to be his handler anymore, though, being put to death would almost be a mercy. For a while Cecil thought of how, if he was assigned a new handler, he would promptly devour him or her and thereby incite management to make the executive decision to dispose of him – and he’d get to experience feeding live one more time as part of the deal, but then he began to think of how Carlos would react to learning that he had killed again, and the idea lost its savor.

More than anything, he wished he could be human, for Carlos. He wished that he could shed his tentacles, grow new teeth that were dull and straight and harmless, and most of all, that he could excise his gluttonous, traitorous stomach and replace it with one that would be satisfied by the same meager rations that Carlos ate. Then he would be able to hold Carlos and kiss him all over without being tempted to make a meal of him, and no one would have any reason to keep him in a cage. But he well knew there was no use in wishing, and so he curled up tighter in a ball, wrapping his tentacles around his naked body, and thus concealed, silently wept.

Meanwhile, Carlos walked down the labyrinthine halls of the base without any particular attention to where he was going, desperately trying not to visualize his predecessor’s grisly fate. He could still hear Cecil’s plaintive cry of _Do you hate me?_ echoing in his ears, and he wished he could bring himself to return to the cell and tell Cecil that no, he didn’t hate him, couldn’t possibly hate him, but he just couldn’t reconcile the idea of what Cecil had done. He kept telling himself that it didn’t make sense, that it wasn’t like Cecil to do what he had done, but the more he turned it over in his mind as he walked, the more he realized how little he actually _knew_ Cecil. They had met only a few short months ago, and they had been openly intimate for only about thirty-six hours now. How could Carlos claim to know Cecil when he barely even understood his species? Thinking of it in those terms, he realized abruptly how silly and unscientific he was being about all this. He needed to _know_ Cecil, to _understand_ him, if he ever hoped to settle the grim matter in his mind.

He had been given the briefest of dossiers about Cecil when he had been assigned to be his handler, but Carlos was certain that far more detailed records about operatives must be kept somewhere in the building. Two women consulting clipboards, one of whom was wearing a lab coat and the other of whom was wearing practical khakis and a flak jacket, were walking down the hall in the opposite direction that he was going, and he excused himself and asked them if they knew the way to the records room, trying to look as though he had a purpose and had merely absentmindedly lost his way. One of them, the one in the lab coat, had a slightly suspicious look on her face, but Carlos wasn’t sure whether that was just the way her features were arranged; the other, though, cheerfully rattled off a list of twists and turns in the halls that she said should take him where he wanted to go. He thanked her and tried to follow the instructions she had given as quickly as he could, before the details of the complicated route had faded from his memory.

He had half-expected that the records room would be guarded or at least locked, but when he reached the door at the dead-end of a corridor as the woman in the flak jacket had described and tried its handle, it opened without so much as a squeak of its hinges. It was pitch-dark inside the room, but Carlos groped around beside the door and found a switch which illuminated several bare bulbs dangling haphazardly from the rafters of the ceiling. In the flickering light, he took in the shelves of dusty cardboard boxes stuffed to bursting with files. He did a brief walk around the room and found the section of boxes with the least dust and cobwebs on them, hypothesizing that these would probably contain the files on the operatives that were currently alive and working. After opening several boxes and thumbing through the tabs on the folders in search of Cecil’s identification number, which he had long since memorized, he finally found the folder he was looking for and pulled it free, careful not to dislodge any of the papers.

He quickly discovered that the folder was arranged in reverse order; when he opened it he was greeted with a photocopied page of his own ID photo, with _Current Handler_ handwritten underneath the image. He flipped to the back of the folder instead, wanting to start from the beginning, and discovered two photocopied pixelated black-and-white photos of Cecil as a toddler, all stubby tentacles and chubby limbs. In one, he appeared to be asleep, curled up with cage bars visible in the background; in the other he was holding what looked like a dead rabbit. The next page was an ID photo of a tired-looking woman with frizzy hair, under which was written _Current Trainer,_ with the word “current” crossed out twice. Carlos got the unsettling impression that the photocopied pages of notes, presumably written by the trainer, that followed were brusque and devoid of sentiment, even when they commemorated that “Cecil took his first steps today” or “Cecil seemed to enjoy his first rabbit.” Mostly they concerned Cecil’s eating habits, which Carlos supposed made sense as it was the trainer’s job to get the operative to understand when, where, and how it was supposed to feed. “Wrapped Cecil’s rabbit in oil-soaked cloth,” one entry proclaimed. “Took some coaxing to get him to swallow w/ cloth; complained that it tasted bad and got stuck in his throat. Gave two fresh mice as reward.”

Using mice as a treat to get Cecil to do whatever the trainer wanted, from getting in his cage to bringing an end to a tantrum, seemed to become an increasingly frequent occurrence in the entries, and it was repeatedly noted that Cecil was “a very food-motivated individual who is almost unfailingly obedient when he knows he will be rewarded.” This had led up to an incident in which “Cecil’s cage was not properly latched last night, and he escaped and got into the storeroom, where he ate six live rabbits and the contents of three mouse tanks,” which was accompanied by a photo of a six or seven-year-old Cecil looking guilty as he tried to hide a very bloated stomach from his photographer. According to the notes, he had subsequently been punished by three days with no food, along with what was described as “targeted verbal humiliation,” and the trainer had noted unsympathetically that her charge had cried throughout the third day.

Only a few pages after that, the notes remarked that young Cecil had been given his first human meal, a dead child of about his own age, which, after a terse description, the trainer had referred to impersonally as “the prey item.” Apparently Cecil had “seemed excited to be given such a large prey item, but expressed concern over the fact that it was human. Attempted for several minutes to get the prey item to speak to him until he could be convinced that prey item was dead and therefore was food. Consumed the prey item in just under eight minutes, very rapid swallowing for his age group.”

Carlos flipped ahead, skimming over the rest of Cecil’s childhood, which was generally more of the same. By the time he was a young teenager, they had him feeding almost solely on humans – mostly children; the base had a special unit assigned to taking calls for the cleanup of children’s bodies so that they could bring them back intact to feed the adolescent operatives – but had still not assigned him a handler or taken him out on calls. At what appeared to be about fifteen years of age (Carlos mostly had to judge by appearance, as the notes had omitted any dates, and where there appeared to be any, they had been blacked out by a marker), Cecil had been given a temporary handler named Leonard. There was a photo of the two of them together; Leonard had thick lips and eyebrows but his smile was kind, and this photo appeared to be the first one in which Cecil was explicitly aware that he was being photographed, as he was giving the camera an enthusiastic sharp-toothed grin. With one hand he was gesturing to his black gear, undoubtedly newly given to him – in the photos from his childhood he had either been naked or occasionally clad in a shapeless garment that looked more like a potato sack than anything else – and with his other hand he was giving a thumbs-up. Carlos found himself smiling at this gawky teenage Cecil, with his lanky frame, his slightly shy but hopeful smile, his tentacles curled into tight coils behind him as though he wanted to hide them from the camera.

This period with Leonard seemed to have served as a sort of internship for Cecil, sometimes taking him out to locations even when there was no call for him to take, just so that he could get used to leaving the base he had grown up in and get accustomed to being around humans he didn’t know. Leonard’s notes had a bit more feeling in them than Cecil’s trainer’s had, Carlos felt. Though he did note things about Cecil’s eating – such as that Cecil had gotten carsick the first time he had fed on location and then been driven back to the base, and had only narrowly avoided regurgitating – he also noted things about Cecil’s personality. “Cecil’s a talker,” Leonard had written. “He loves to chat about this or that or anything, and he picks up words faster than any operative I’ve worked with,” and, later, “Cecil is a sensitive boy. Today he asked why some kids started crying when they saw him, and when I explained that they were scared of him and that they were sad because they’d just lost their daddy, too, Cecil started crying himself.”

Leonard had remained Cecil’s handler for several years before he had been assigned a “permanent handler” and fallen into the regular pattern of his duties that continued on to the present. Carlos felt his stomach drop as he looked at the man’s picture, wondering whether this was the man that Cecil had eaten. He was completely unremarkable in appearance; Carlos doubted whether he would even be able to describe him if asked five minutes later, but Carlos decided that he had had kind eyes, at least. He flipped ahead quickly, only skimming the subsequent notes; the only thing that stuck out to him was that at the bottom of several pages, a handwriting completely different from that of the handler taking the notes had written things like, “Good appetite potential. Possible candidate for Project CT,” and “Indiscriminate feeding habits. Possible candidate for Project CT.” He frowned, searching in vain for some key that would inform him of what “Project CT” might be. He flipped on and on and on, through years’ worth of unremarkable notes about driving to and from locations and Cecil’s uninteresting exams (there was never once noted any problem with his health), until he was nearly at the end of the folder. Finally he came to several pages stapled together that had “INCIDENT REPORT” stamped in red on the front. He flipped it open and was confronted with a photograph that sent a shiver down his spine: it was Cecil, lying supine on his exam table, seemingly completely unaware that he was being photographed – seemingly completely unaware of anything around him, really, as his tongue was lolling out to one side and his eyes were rolled back in a look of carnal rapture. His hands were cradling a stomach that was clearly full of a human – a human who was, judging by the visible shape of a hand struggling in vain to push free of the stomach walls, still alive in his flesh prison. Carlos couldn’t believe that someone had stood by and taken a photograph rather than making any attempt to help the man.

He flipped to the next page, which was typed rather than handwritten. “Operative 1611213518 (“Cecil”) consumed his handler, [NAME REDACTED], during a routine examination,” it read. “[NAME REDACTED] was swallowed while still alive and was not incapacitated beforehand, but his struggling did not cause regurgitation or even appear to distress 1611213518 whatsoever. Despite a partnership of over ten years, 1611213518 showed no remorse over consuming [NAME REDACTED], though some fear of punishment was apparent. Candidacy for Project CT: CONFIRMED.”

The next three pages in the stapled packet contained nothing but black lines, as someone had apparently taken a marker to whatever text had been on them. After that, there was only one page left in the file – Carlos’s ID photo with the “Current Handler” caption. Carlos let the folder fall closed, feeling, if possible, more confused than ever.

Numbly he returned the folder to its place in the box of files, his mind’s eye fixated on the image of Cecil with his belly full of his live handler. He had never seen such a look of pure pleasure on Cecil’s face before; it was clear from that photograph that Cecil had enjoyed himself immensely as his handler had squirmed and struggled and died. Carlos wasn’t sure whether to find that comforting or disturbing. On the one hand, it made it easier to understand why Cecil hadn’t done anything to try to save his handler; Carlos knew, scientifically speaking, how hard it was to think of anything or anyone else when the brain was overwhelmed with pleasure-induced chemicals. But on a more emotional level, it was just disturbing, to know that Cecil was capable of enjoying himself so much and so selfishly while a living person died horribly inside of him. Carlos found himself wondering whether the man had suffocated before Cecil’s digestive enzymes had started to work on him, or if he had felt the burn of the stomach acid stripping his flesh before he lost consciousness. The membranes of his eyes and mouth would have been particularly vulnerable to the acid, and Carlos couldn’t help imagining the man’s eyes melting in their sockets, his mouth unable to form a scream as the acid ate bloody ulcers into his lips and tongue. _No, don’t think about that._ He gritted his teeth, trying his best to push the grisly musings from his mind.

He thought instead of the photo of teenage Cecil, of the innocence in those eyes, that smile. _He’s not evil. Not by any stretch of the imagination. If he says what happened was an accident, maybe I should take his word for it._ It occurred to him then that Cecil had made the confession solely out of concern for Carlos’s wellbeing. He wanted Carlos to be on his guard with him, he realized, so that such an incident would not repeat itself. _He doesn’t trust himself,_ Carlos thought, suddenly feeling sorry for Cecil, imagining what it would be like not to be able to trust his own body. _He must actually care about me if he’s worried enough about the possibility of hurting me that he’d tell me the truth, knowing that I was likely to react the way I did,_ he reasoned, and then wondered if he was just grasping at straws for an excuse to forgive Cecil. He shook off the thought. He was being perfectly logical, he decided. Questioning himself was no help.

He turned off the light and left the records room, then went to pick up some rations for lunch, eating them alone in a secluded hallway, just giving himself a little more time away from Cecil to process everything. But when that was done he turned his path slowly but purposefully back toward Cecil’s cell. He stood outside the door for several minutes, taking deep breaths and thinking about what he should say. He would tell Cecil that he did not hate him, that he still cared for him, but that he couldn’t reconcile what he’d done, whether it had truly been an accident or not, and that he was going to have to ask for reassignment. He would assure Cecil that he would still try to see him from time to time, but that he just couldn’t be his handler anymore, knowing what he knew. He had mapped out how the conversation would go in his head, and was ready to launch straight into it when he pushed open the cell door, but when he saw Cecil curled up tightly in a ball of quivering tentacles in the back corner of his cage, body convulsing in quiet sobs, all the prepared words vanished from his mind. “Cecil,” he said quietly, his voice breaking a little.

Cecil raised his head; his eyes were red and puffy from crying. “Carlos?” he said shakily. “You… you came back?”

He sounded so hopeful, Carlos could practically _feel_ him wishing that somehow everything could go back to the way it had been. He felt the knot in his stomach tighten. He wanted that, too, but how could it possibly be? Carlos could never erase from his mind the knowledge of what Cecil had done, what he was capable of. But god, it was practically impossible to even think of saying so when Cecil was fixing that longing, bright-eyed gaze on him. Finally he said, “Yeah, I did. But… we need to talk, Cecil.”

Cecil nodded tremulously, and Carlos went to the cage door and unlocked it. Cecil came hesitantly to the front of the cage, but when Carlos swung the door open, Cecil apparently couldn’t resist falling into Carlos’s arms with a renewed bout of sobbing. Carlos could do nothing but hold him there, feeling him shudder and convulse as tears slowly soaked through the shoulder of his lab coat and t-shirt. “Don’t leave me,” Cecil choked out between sobs. “Please, Carlos, I need you. I’ll never hurt you. I love you, I love you, I need you. Carlos…”

“Cecil, stop,” Carlos said, though it hurt him to say it. “You’re not being fair to me. You killed someone, and you can’t expect me to just forget –”

“I don’t expect you to forget… I wanted you to know, I wanted to be _honest_ …”

“And I… I do appreciate that, the honesty, but it’s not a matter of whether or not I know about it, it’s the fact that it _happened_ , Cecil. The man had been your handler for at least ten years, and the only thing you seem to feel bad about is that killing him might be damaging our relationship. That’s… terrifying, honestly. How can I know that you wouldn’t get tired of me some day and do the same thing, and forget about me as soon as I was gone, as you’ve clearly forgotten about him?” Carlos took Cecil by the shoulders and shunted him gently away from his chest so that he was an arm’s length away from Carlos. Cecil convulsed a little as he pushed him away, and Carlos realized that he had cried so hard that he had given himself the hiccups.

“I haven’t forgotten about him, but he didn’t _mean_ anything to me, Carlos, he never did. So what if he was my handler for a long time? Time is meaningless. Who even keeps track of it? If someone doesn’t mean anything to you, if you don’t care about them and they don’t care about you, it doesn’t matter how long you’re with them. But you, you’re different, you’re more, you’re everything. I could _never_ see you as just food. Maybe I’ve fantasized from time to time, but I’d neveractually –”

“Hold on.” Carlos closed his eyes and rubbed his thumb and forefinger over the bridge of his nose, a gesture he only made when he was utterly vexed. “You’ve fantasized? About _eating me?_ ”

Cecil looked desperate. “Just – occasionally, I – Carlos, please, don’t look at me like that, it’s not like I was ever actually going to do it… You don’t understand, in my head it wasn’t just about eating, it was about being as close to you as possible, having you inside me, that’s all I wanted…”

“At the expense of my life?”

“I told you, _I was never going to actually do it!_ ” Carlos could see that Cecil was getting frustrated; his nostrils flared and his tentacles were curling up behind him. “Why can’t humans ever understand?”

“That’s just the thing, Cecil. Maybe a human like me will never be able to understand you. Maybe this kind of relationship can’t work between us. Maybe you’d be better off getting some companionship from another operative…”

“Don’t say things like that, Carlos,” Cecil wailed. “ _Please_. All I’ve ever done is love you. I’ve never wanted to hurt you, even if you have a hard time believing that given my track record. Please, don’t tell me to stop loving you, because I can’t.”

Carlos sighed. “You don’t even know what love is. You like the way I look, you like having sex with me, and apparently you like fantasizing about making dinner out of me, but that’s not love. That’s just lust and loneliness, and a very misplaced appetite.”

“I love you,” Cecil insisted, gazing defiantly into Carlos’s eyes. “I love how much you care about science. I love the way your nose crinkles when you yawn. I love that when you’re driving, you hum sometimes – not a tune, just one low note, as if you’re humming along with the motor. I love the way you sleep in the cell with me every night even though you don’t have to. I love that you treat me like an equal, most of the time, not like a slave or a pet or a machine. I love how you make me feel, like, for the first time in my life there’s a possibility of something more than concrete and cages and corpses… But hey, what do I know? I’m not even a person, I’m just a stupid corpse-eater who doesn’t know what love is.” His voice turned cold.

“Cecil, I…” Carlos couldn’t find the words. “I’m sorry,” was what came out, though he knew it wasn’t the right thing to say. “I wish things were different, I wish that I could trust you, but…”

“But _what?_ Are you scared of me, Carlos?”

“Not scared of _you_ , per se, but… scared of what you might be capable of, yeah. Can you blame me? Do you ever really think about what your handler must have gone through when you ate him?”

“Listen. Why don’t you request a weapons permit from management? You could get a taser or a cattle prod and keep it with you, and if I ever, _ever_ gave you a reason to feel unsafe, you could just shock me into submission.”

“I wish it was that simple –”

“Why can’t it be?”

Carlos paused to consider. Cecil had a point. “That might help me feel safe, but it doesn’t change the fact that I see you differently, knowing what you did,” he said after a moment’s thought.

“Well, if what you were seeing was a lie, or at least an obfuscated truth, then maybe it’s better that you see me differently. I don’t want to have any secrets from you, Carlos.”

“Speaking of secrets… can you tell me what “Project CT” is?” The curiosity had been eating at Carlos since he had read Cecil’s file.

It was immediately clear that the term was as unfamiliar to Cecil as it had been to Carlos, though; he frowned and shook his head. “It sounds confidential.”

“Hm.”

“Anyway… do you think you could at least try that out? Before you decide to make any drastic changes in our situation?” There were those damnably hopeful eyes again, looking at Carlos so earnestly.

Carlos had just opened his mouth to reply when there came a loud, measured knock on the closed cell door. Both Carlos and Cecil looked toward the door in bewilderment, wondering who could possibly be requesting entrance. “Come in?” said Carlos questioningly after a few moments had elapsed, and ever so slowly the door swung inward.

A dark-haired woman strode inside, as poised as though she was stepping up to a podium rather than walking into a barren concrete operative cell. Carlos knew her by reputation more than appearance: she was the liaison between those who worked in the base and the shady, rarely-ever-seen heads of management.

“Good afternoon, Carlos, Cecil,” said Pamela Winchell. “May I call you Carlos and Cecil? Good, yes, we’re all friends here.”

Carlos and Cecil exchanged a nonplussed look before turning forced, uncertain smiles on the woman.

She turned around to close the cell door behind her before turning back to the scientist and the operative. “I’m here to talk to you because management is rather concerned about your… recent activities. If you know what I mean.”

Carlos felt a chill, and began to wish he hadn’t decided that to hell with the possibility of surveillance cameras.

“Shame on you, Carlos,” said Pamela, “taking advantage of an animal for your own sexual gratification. It’s sick, really, not to _mention_ how unprofessional it is. No one would have guessed that transferring you out of the lab would cause you to take such, ah, drastic actions.”

Carlos opened his mouth to speak, but Pamela cut him off as she continued.

“But then, of course, we couldn’t keep you in the lab, could we? No, you were much too nosy. Couldn’t stay focused on your own tasks – you had to look into other scientists’ work and question data that _management had explicitly approved_. All those trials that had to be repeated because of you, all the data that no longer accurately reflected what management wanted – you were much too troublesome and expensive to be an asset. What, you didn’t think we transferred you as a _promotion_ , did you?” She gave a throaty laugh. “Perhaps now you could venture a guess as to why we made you a handler for an operative who was a known killer?”

Carlos felt his stomach drop as he made the obvious connection. “You wanted to get rid of me. You… you thought he would kill me.” He glanced at Cecil, whose expression was unreadable.

“That would have been easiest,” Pamela affirmed, “though we believed it was just as likely that you would be killed in the field. I’ll admit, though, that we never expected you to start fucking him. That one took us by surprise.”

“So you wanted me dead, but it didn’t happen,” said Carlos through gritted teeth, ignoring the jab.

“Yes, you’ve got the gist. And now we have you poking around in the records room. You really are troublesome, which is why management has decided that it’s necessary to expedite your removal from our organization.” She turned her attention on Cecil, smiling in the way one might smile at a dog or a slightly slow child. “Cecil, are you hungry?”

Without looking at Carlos, Cecil nodded.

“Of course you are. How would you like a nice meal? A fresh, live, still-squirming meal? It’s okay – I know you don’t want to disobey, you’re a good boy, aren’t you? But don’t worry, this is sanctioned by management. He’s all yours. There will be no punishment whatsoever.”

Carlos felt his heart starting to beat faster when he saw that Cecil was licking his lips.

“And I’ll tell you what,” Pamela went on, “when you’re done eating, I’ll take you somewhere that you can lie down in a real, soft bed, and you can sleep for as long as you want. How would that be?”

Cecil nodded slowly. “A real bed… And after that?”

“After that, we’ll have a brand-new job for you. A job where you’ll get to eat live all the time – anyone management decides that they want to get rid of, well, they’ll be lunch for you.”

“Project CT,” Carlos said through numb lips.                                                             

Pamela smirked. “Very good, Carlos, yes. _Project Cut-Throat,_ a new initiative to put those with certain talents to the purpose of advantageous assassination _._ Are you glad that you got to satisfy that insatiable curiosity of yours one last time?” She turned back to Cecil. “Go ahead, Cecil. Eat.”

And to Carlos’s horror, Cecil turned toward him, smacking his lips and looking him up and down the way he sometimes looked at a corpse before he swallowed it. Carlos began to back away slowly, and Cecil matched him step for step, until he had backed Carlos into the wall. Carlos’s heart was hammering in his chest as tentacles reached out for him, grasping at his arms, his legs. “Cecil, don’t do this,” he choked out, though he could barely breathe in his panic, let alone speak.

Cecil leaned in close, and Carlos closed his eyes, silently praying to whatever powers of science or religion could possibly save him. He felt hot breath on his neck, felt the slimy wetness of Cecil’s tongue licking from the lapel of his lab coat all the way up to the curve of his jaw. Suddenly the breath was against his ear, and he heard Cecil whisper ever so quietly, “ _Just play along.”_

Carlos hardly dared to hope that he had heard Cecil correctly, but right now it was all he had to go on. He supposed that whether or not Cecil was pretending, Carlos’s course of action would have to be the same. In either case, there was only one thing he could do, and that was to struggle.

He tried to use the wall for leverage to shove himself away from Cecil’s grasp, and rather than feeling resistance, he almost felt as though Cecil pushed into him to help him move away – to help him move closer to Pamela. And in a split second, a tentacle that had been curled around Carlos’s upper arm had darted out and wrapped around her neck like a lasso. As she reached for the handgun on her hip, a second tentacle batted the gun away, sending it clattering to the floor. In what felt like less than three seconds, all the tentacles that had been clinging to Carlos were wrapped around Pamela instead, lifting her a foot off the ground as she struggled, her stream of obscenities cut short as the tentacle around her neck tightened enough that she could no longer speak.

And then, Cecil started to move her towards himself, angling her head to his mouth.

“Cecil, _DON’T!_ ” Carlos yelled as he realized what Cecil was doing, but it was too late: Cecil had already unhinged his jaw and begun to feed the squirming woman into his throat. Carlos watched helplessly as he gulped and slurped and swallowed, more and more of the woman’s thrashing body disappearing down his throat.

Carlos remembered what Cecil had said: _I can’t regurgitate a fully undigested body, it’s too big_. That meant that if he swallowed all of her, she was done for. But if Carlos could get Cecil to stop swallowing now, maybe he could still pull her free of his gullet. “Cecil, stop! You’re going to kill her! And then _they’re_ going to kill _us!_ Cecil, for god’s sake _stop eating her!_ ” Carlos cried, but he may as well have been sitting quietly in the corner for all the attention Cecil paid him.

He could only watch in transfixed horror as more and more of her settled into the squirming bulge of Cecil’s stomach. The frenzied kicking of her legs sent her dainty shoes flying and clattering to the floor as Cecil tipped his head back to let gravity help seal his meal’s fate. As Carlos watched her knees pass his lips, then her calves, and then finally her feet, he knew that it was all over for her; there was nothing he could do, now. Cecil’s jaw slid back into place and he gave a final wet, heavy swallow, sending the rest of her body down his throat to the impossibly cramped confines of his swollen stomach.

“You didn’t have to eat her,” said Carlos numbly, staring at Cecil’s belly as Pamela kicked and squirmed fruitlessly within.

Cecil just moaned, and then belched.

“Someone will have seen that on the surveillance cameras, wherever they are,” Carlos said aloud as he realized it. “We need to get out of here, and fast. Come on.” When Cecil didn’t respond, he moved closer to shake Cecil by the shoulders, pushing down his squeamishness over the belly full of angry woman he had to lean over to do it. “Cecil! Come _on!_ ”

Cecil’s tongue lolled out and his eyes rolled up and he moaned some more. Carlos realized that getting through to him now was going to be about as impossible as having a lucid conversation with someone having a continuous orgasm. Forced to improvise, he grabbed Cecil by the hand and yanked him toward the cell door; to his relief, Cecil stumbled after him, clutching at his stomach.

Carlos had no idea where he was going as he got out into the hall, but he knew there were likely to be guards headed toward them already, and knowing they would be unlikely to reach the exit without running into someone, his first instinct was to hide. He hoped fiercely that there were no cameras in the hallway itself, but a hallway was no place to hide; he needed a room with no cameras where he and Cecil could lie low until it was safe to sneak out of the building. He paused for a moment as his frazzled brain struggled to consider the situation before tightening his grip on Cecil’s hand and charging toward the supply closet halfway down the hall. He swung open the door, shoved the catatonic Cecil inside before pressing in himself, and then shut the door behind them, plunging the tiny space into total darkness.


	7. The Escape

For Cecil, everything had become a blur of exquisite pleasure once the warm, squirming body had started to press into his stomach. Once she was fully inside him, her every kick and wriggle sent little shockwaves of pleasure up his spine, and he could feel his stomach struggling to tighten and hold his meal in place in preparation for digestion as it gave pleased groans. Even when her movements pushed his stomach up against his lungs and forced him to draw in his breath in harsh, shallow pants, it could not detract from the primal ecstasy of the moment, the sheer overload of sensation. Though her wild struggles occasionally sent a sharp flicker of pain through the thick haze of pleasure, the pain was sweet, too, reminding him that even though she was fighting for all she was worth, this was a battle his body would inevitably win. His stomach craved this, and he would swear that its gurgles grew richer and more eager with each squirm and punch of the body trapped inside his, as though her fight to preserve her life was counteractively expediting his digestive process. He belched thickly and felt the struggle inside him intensify at the sound, making him practically shudder with satisfaction.

Abruptly he was aware that Carlos was in front of him, Carlos was grabbing his shoulders and shaking him, Carlos was saying something to him. Cecil’s hazy brain reasoned that, surely, Carlos must be thanking him for saving his life. But before he could bring himself to parse out the words that Carlos was actually saying or form any kind of coherent response to them, Pamela’s wriggling hit such a sweet spot inside him that he could only moan, out of his mind with pleasure. He was still in the throes of the moment when he felt Carlos’s hand close around his own and jerk him forward, and loose-limbed he stumbled after him, not caring what was happening or where they were going, unable to think of anything outside of his full stomach and the feelings it was radiating out through his entire body.

And then he was being shoved unceremoniously into a closet, and he stumbled over the mops and bottles of cleaning fluids on the floor, but as soon as he had regained his balance, he sank down to the floor to settle in; this was as good a place as any to relax and digest. To make things even better, Carlos swung the door shut and pressed in with him, forced by the tightness of the space to sit on the floor directly beside Cecil, close enough to press against his flank. Cecil whimpered; having a fresh meal in his belly and Carlos tucked tight against his side was almost too good to handle. He leaned back against the wall, resting his palms on the taut skin of his belly, feeling the squirming within underneath his hands, the movements stirring up burps and sighs of enjoyment. He could feel his meal’s energy beginning to flag, her struggles becoming less consistent, her air supply no doubt reduced to almost nothing by now with the belches she had forced up his throat, and his stomach took advantage of the lull to tighten its hold on its contents, giving a long low _gloooorrrurrp_ as digestion got well and truly underway. He patted the side of his swollen belly, feeling content, sated, sleepy, the intensity of the initial pleasure receding into the gentler but no less pleasing satisfaction of his meal digesting.

Carlos, however, was nowhere near having such a pleasant experience. Shoved up against Cecil’s side, he could feel the woman stuffed into Cecil’s belly moving, struggling, _panicking,_ and _oh god,_ the sounds his stomach was making – surely his brutal digestion was already at work on her, even though she was still most definitely alive… Carlos counted to one hundred under his breath, trying to do anything to keep himself from picturing what must be happening to the woman’s body. His strained to hear whether there were any footsteps in the hallway outside the closet, but he could barely hear at all over the way his heartbeat continued hammering in his ears. What he _did_ hear was Cecil belching, loudly; Carlos, hoping Cecil would be lucid enough to understand him by now, pinched him on the arm and whispered, “ _Shh_ , Cecil, please, you have to be quiet, okay?” As quietly as he was whispering, he couldn’t keep the tremor out of his voice.

“Mmmnn,” Cecil moaned softly in what Carlos could only hope was assent. And he was quieter after that, though there was no way to muffle the noisy _glrrns_ and _guuuurgls_ churning from within his belly. Carlos only hoped that anyone passing by the closet would mistake them for sounds from the pipes in the walls. He knew that if someone _was_ curious enough to open the closet door, there would be nothing he could do to defend himself or Cecil, and so he tried not to even consider the possibility.

Carlos did his best to be somewhere else, mentally. He tried to think of happy moments in his life to distract him from where he was presently – moments of scientific breakthrough, mostly. But when he tried to think of the time that he had been most content, relaxed and at ease, he kept arriving at the time he had spent with Cecil at the oasis – the sex, of course, but even more so falling asleep with his arm around Cecil, the damp earth cool beneath him and a light early evening breeze at his back. He had felt such a deep peace spread through his entire body, such an overpowering affection toward Cecil as he lay close to him. Today Cecil had said that he loved him, and Carlos found himself wondering if he could say that he loved him in return. He found Cecil attractive, against his better judgment, he couldn’t deny that, and Cecil’s dependence on the infrastructure that had created him, coupled with his limited understanding of humans and their normal social customs, made him vulnerable in a way that awakened in Carlos an urge to take care of him, to protect him. But hand in hand with that naïveté, as Carlos was learning more and more, came a violent and selfish greed that had never been taught restraint. How could he love someone who would sacrifice a human life to satisfy a carnal desire? Could he blame Cecil for assigning such small value to human life, given the impersonal way he had been raised? Did it matter whether or not he was blameworthy? And even if it did, was it even possible for Carlos to stamp out his feelings? As the minutes turned to hours in the cramped, stifling darkness, Carlos’s mind turned over these questions as slowly and painstakingly as a millstone crushing tough grain, but he preferred dwelling on them to letting his mind wander to what was happening next to him.

His reverie was interrupted by a quiet groan from Cecil, and Carlos was about to _shush_ him again when he realized that Cecil was moaning his name. “Car-los… _mmnn, Caaaarlooos, oh…_ ” In spite of the situation, the way he was crooning Carlos’s name, his usually smooth voice wrecked with pleasure, made heat pool in Carlos’s groin. But suddenly he remembered the path of their conversation before Pamela had entered the cell, and he felt a cold, plunging sensation as he realized what must be happening: _He’s fantasizing that it’s me that he ate. And probably getting off on it._ His rational mind was completely appalled and repulsed, but there was a part of him – the part of him that was still very aware of the tension gathering between his legs – that felt somehow gratified that Cecil would associate Carlos with what was clearly mind-blowing pleasure. And Carlos had to admit that this lent credence to Cecil’s assertion that he intended to keep consumption of Carlos confined to the realm of fantasy – after all, if Cecil had truly wanted to devour him, Carlos would be the one in Cecil’s belly now, instead of Pamela; there would have been nothing stopping him.

With that thought in mind, Carlos found himself unable to help giving in to imagining what it would have been like if that had been the case. He imagined Cecil’s jaws gaping before him, the hungry pit of his throat framed by sharp teeth and long tongue laced with saliva, imagined being forced face-first by eager tentacles into that hot, wet, slimy darkness. He imagined how impossibly tight and breathless the trip down his gullet would be, the way the stomach waiting at the end of the esophagus wouldn’t offer much more space but would stretch to conform to his body on all sides as he was forced inside. In his current state of unlikely arousal, he could not bring himself to imagine it as painful and terrifying as he knew it would be; instead, the idea of the hot, slick stomach walls clinging to him everywhere and trying to churn him like nothing more than food made him so hard that it took conscious effort to remain still and silent and not shove his hand into his pants to free his straining erection. The present surroundings lent a startling realism to the intensifying fantasy; the pure darkness of the closet could as easily have been the darkness of Cecil’s stomach, and the groans and gurgles of his digestion seemed to fill the whole space, as though they could have been coming from all around Carlos.

If Pamela had been true to her word, she would’ve taken Cecil, with his belly full of Carlos, to some room with a plush bed where he would have lain to digest. Carlos imagined Cecil dozing, stretched out and comfortable and surrounded by pillows with his arms around his Carlos-filled gut, a satisfied smile curling his lips and the occasional soft burp rumbling up his throat. The idea of that, of knowing that it was his body giving Cecil such satisfaction, had Carlos dangerously close to coming even though he hadn’t so much as stroked himself. He thought of how his body would soften and melt and digest, how as Cecil relaxed and napped he would become nothing more than a heavy, rounded, sloshing bulge that Cecil might rest his hand on as he slept, that would sit heavily between his legs if he sat up, and _oh, I wish he had done it, I wish he had just – I wish he had, oh GOD –_

And with that he was coming, biting his lip so hard he tasted blood, every muscle in his body rigid and straining as he tried to stay still even as the orgasm blazed through his consciousness. As soon as he came down from it, as he felt the hot wet spot spreading on the front of his jeans, he felt unbelievably filthy, monstrous, disgusting. A woman was dead or dying in the confines of Cecil’s stomach beside him, and here he was getting off on a fantasy version of the manner of her death. It was sick, twisted, demented, not to mention completely irrational. Carlos told himself that the fear and adrenaline must be to blame, addling his brain and cross-wiring disgust with arousal to sublimate the horror of it. It was not a satisfactory answer, but it made him feel at least slightly less guilty about what had just occurred.

Morbidly, he began to wonder whether or not the woman was still alive in her flesh prison. It was difficult to gauge just how much time had passed in the confines of the dark closet, but Carlos was certain that it had been hours; the fierceness of the cramping in his legs and lower back told him that much, as well as his thankfully small but steadily growing need to urinate. He heard a soft snore and realized that Cecil must have fallen asleep. Slowly he moved his hand and let his palm come to rest on the side of Cecil’s belly. He was not sure whether what he felt was subtle movement from the person inside or merely the burbling and churning of Cecil’s digestion, but either way the feeling caused him to jerk his hand back with a shiver. _I don’t want to know._

Instead, he began to consider what his next move would have to be. He knew they should not even try to leave the relative safety of the closet until Cecil had digested his meal enough to be easily mobile, should they need to flee with haste. That meant probably at least another few hours before it would be worth the risk of opening the door to see whether the hallway was clear. And after that… well, nowhere in the base would be safe for either of them now. They would have to get outside, steal a jeep from the vehicle lot, and put as much distance between themselves and this place as was possible. But where would they go? The desert was not a welcoming place, nor were the people who lived in it particularly fond of strangers, let alone fugitives. Carlos thought of the base that had been infected with the shaking sickness where he and Cecil had stayed for several weeks. If they returned there, was it possible that they would be willing to harbor Carlos and Cecil, at least until they figured out where to go next? Carlos’s hope was small; he knew that their gratitude was unlikely to extend beyond courtesy, and in all likelihood when they looked at Cecil all they would see would be the nearly two dozen dead who had disappeared down his gullet over the course of their three-week stay. But try as he might, he could think of nowhere else to go.

And even if the people of the base took them in, what then? Cecil would get hungry, and there was no guarantee that they would have any dead for him to feed on. And Cecil had lately shown that he did not have many qualms about eating the living instead. If he tried to satisfy his appetite by glutting on one of the people of the base, he was likely to get both himself and Carlos killed – the people of the desert were not shy about pulling their triggers, especially when it came to avenging their own.

He knew it would be easier for him to find a place for himself there without Cecil. Surely he could make himself useful to them, become a working member of their community if he had to. For a moment the thought occurred to him that he could slip out of the closet on his own now and leave Cecil to fend for himself, but as soon as he had thought it, he dismissed it out of hand. He could not leave Cecil to probable death, especially when Cecil’s current situation was in large part because of Carlos – Cecil would have no danger to fear right now if he had merely obeyed and feasted on Carlos as Pamela had commanded. Carlos was grateful that Cecil had sacrificed his own safety and comfort to avoid taking Carlos’s life, but god, he wished Cecil’s reaction hadn’t been to eat Pamela instead. If he had just incapacitated her, tightened that tentacle around her neck until she had passed out for want of air, they could have fled and been miles and miles into the open desert right now instead of stuffed into this closet. Then again, he thought with grim rationality, that would have meant Cecil needing to feed that much sooner. Maybe it was for the best that he would have something substantial in his stomach as they made their escape.

The fatigue Carlos had woken with that morning had not left him, and though he had thought the adrenaline must have banished it entirely, the monotony and darkness of the closet, coupled with the steady, relaxed rhythm of Cecil’s breathing and the warmth of him at Carlos’s side, conspired to make Carlos’s eyelids droop. As he began to slip in and out of dozing, he found it difficult to keep track of whether his eyes were open or closed, as the darkness meant there was little visible difference between the two states. His tensed, sore shoulders began to sag, the rigid column of his spine slouching sideways, and before he knew it he was leaning against Cecil’s side, his head pillowed partially against Cecil’s shoulder and partially against a tentacle that happened to be bunched up there. And he slept.

It was Cecil who woke first, groggy and disoriented by the darkness but immediately and satisfyingly aware of the warm heaviness of his full stomach, gurgling richly away at its fresh contents. It still felt so very, very good, but his meal had been still for a good long while now, and his brain was no longer so awash in the overload of pleasure as to cancel out all other thought. For the first time since he had made the snap decision to eat the woman who had tried to set him on Carlos, he began to worry about what was going to happen now. Carlos was still beside him; he could feel his reassuring warmth against his flank and shoulder, and could tell by his slow breathing that he was asleep. _Carlos is safe,_ Cecil thought warmly, _and that’s what matters._

The problem now, he supposed, was going to be ensuring that Carlos stayed that way, and he knew as well as Carlos did that the base was no longer going to be safe for either of them. But he could not wrap his mind around the thought of leaving the base forever, this place where he had been born and raised and always returned to. Maybe they would not have to leave, he thought with a childish hopefulness; maybe Carlos could come up with some scientific way to take over the base, and anyone who chose to take their side could join them, while those who didn’t could be locked up in old operative cages, and Cecil could take one for a meal every day…

But he knew that that was no more than a dream. No one could overtake management, not even clever Carlos. They would have to leave the base, and in all likelihood, they would never be able to return. Cecil did not know where they would go or how they would get there, but he tried not to think about it too much. _Carlos will think of something._ And wherever they ended up, they would be together.

Cecil felt Carlos stir at his side, and he slid a tentacle around him to give him a comforting squeeze and indicate that he was awake, too. After a few moments of silence, Cecil heard Carlos say in a barely audible whisper, “It’s time to get out of here.”

Cecil squeezed again with his tentacle to affirm his understanding, muffling a burp as he shifted to ready himself to heave to his feet. He reached for Carlos’s hand in the dark, found it and grasped it tightly. “Open the door slowly,” Carlos said, and Cecil groped for the door handle with a tentacle and pushed the door gently open, wincing as its hinges creaked in protest. He shut his eyes against the glare of the lights from the hall fluorescents, which seemed absurdly bright after the sojourn in the darkness of the closet.

Carlos got slowly, stiffly to his feet, and Cecil followed suit, supporting his stomach with a tentacle and the hand that wasn’t holding on to Carlos’s. Carlos peered out through the crack in the door for what felt like several long minutes before announcing in a whisper, “Looks clear,” opening the door all the way, and stepping out.

Still grasping Carlos’s hand, Cecil followed Carlos down the hall as he made his way toward the vehicle lot. The area seemed deserted, as usual; nothing seemed amiss, which made Cecil feel distinctly uneasy. Carlos voiced a similar sentiment as he opened the heavy door out to the vehicle lot and headed for the nearest jeep, saying, “I don’t like this, Cecil, this is too easy…”

And as Cecil reluctantly let go of Carlos’s hand so that he could round the jeep to reach the passenger side, he felt a prickling sensation near the back of his neck. His hand flew reflexively to the area, and his fingers closed on something small, hard, and foreign. Pulling it free and holding it in front of his face, he saw that it was a small orange dart with a needle-sharp tip. At about the same moment, he began to feel pleasantly tingly all over, and blackness began to gnaw at the edges of his vision. “Carlos…” he managed to say, though his lips were suddenly reluctant to form words. He saw Carlos turn his head to look, saw the horror dawning across his face as his eyes lit on the dart held numbly between Cecil’s thumb and forefinger, and then everything went black and Cecil’s knees buckled bonelessly beneath him. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.

Carlos knew he had no time to think; he raced around to the other side of the jeep, yanked the passenger door open, and leaned down to heave Cecil up into it. God, he was _heavy_ – with his stomach still so full, Carlos may as well have been trying to lift two people at once. Grunting with the effort, he finally managed to get Cecil mostly into the passenger seat, throwing limp tentacles haphazardly in after him. He heard a soft _whoosh_ ing sound near his ear and knew that a dart destined for him had narrowly missed its mark. Heart pounding, rather than waste the time to get back to the other side of the car, he clambered desperately over Cecil to land unceremoniously in the driver’s seat. He kept his head down as he started the engine and wrenched the jeep into drive, hoping to avoid any more darts that might be flying his way. Even as he jammed his foot down on the pedal, he could hear the rev of other jeep’s engines starting. They weren’t about to let them get away so easily, it seemed.

Carlos floored the pedal, and the jeep’s engine choked and whined as it struggled to accelerate, but finally it picked up speed and cleared the boundary of the vehicle lot. Carlos kept his head down as low as he could while still being able to keep one eye on where he was driving. He could hear the still-open passenger side door flapping wildly and prayed that Cecil wouldn’t fall out.

After a few minutes, he dared to glimpse back over his shoulder. A small fleet of jeeps was in pursuit, though thankfully they didn’t seem to be gaining ground on them. And when he looked back again after what felt like a good twenty minutes, they even seemed to be falling back. Carlos was too wary to take this as a good sign, and as the other jeeps faded into the darkness of the distant deepening twilight, he understood. He looked at the jeep’s gas meter and saw that it was nanometers away from bypassing the _empty_ line.

The whole thing must have been intentional. The other jeeps had not been pursuing them with the intent of capturing them; they had only been shepherding them far enough into the desert that, when their jeep inevitably gave out, they would have no hope of returning to shelter on foot. _They’re leaving the dirty work to the desert,_ he thought grimly, even as the engine began to cough and the jeep began to decelerate in spite of Carlos’s foot still jamming the pedal to the floor.

Carlos felt numb as the jeep steadily slowed and eventually stopped. For a few moments its engine continued to idle, choking noisily, but it quickly gave up and, with a last plaintive rumble, went silent. Within moments the silence was pressing in hard on all sides, and with it came cold; the desert night was falling fast, and with its dark profundity came a bone-deep chill, the very opposite of the blood-boiling heat of the day.

He tried not to let fear paralyze him. They would find a way out of this, he tried to assure himself. But there was nothing they could do now, not in the deadly dark of night, and with Cecil unconscious from the tranquilizer for who knew how long. The only thing they could do now was to wait out the hours of darkness within the relative safety of the jeep’s interior, and hope that no monsters came calling.

Carlos knew there ought to be an emergency blanket in the jeep’s trunk compartment, but he didn’t dare leave the confines of the jeep to look for it. Still, he knew that the cold was only going to get worse as the night went on, and he was only wearing his jeans, t-shirt, and lab coat, while Cecil was even worse off, being entirely naked. He knew that the best thing for it would be to conserve their body heat between them by staying as close together as possible, and so he shifted himself to press as close to Cecil as he could. He found that Cecil’s stomach was radiating a profound warmth, and as hours began to creep by and the cold turned from a biting chill to a bitter, savage toothed thing that made Carlos wonder whether or not all of his extremities were going to make it through the night, he found himself increasingly drawn to that wellspring of heat. By the deepest hours of night, he was wrapped around Cecil’s belly as much as the space would allow, the top of his head resting against Cecil’s chest and his cheek pillowed against the top of the outward curve of Cecil’s swollen gut. As a result, he was forced to listen to the cacophony of digestive noises emanating from deep within, but he found them preferable to the strange howls and chanting that had begun to sound in the distance outside. He started to imagine again that he was the one being churned up inside, but this time the thought was bizarrely comforting rather than simply arousing. There would be no worry or fear there, nothing to be done but to digest and be a good meal for Cecil, surrounded by Cecil, Cecil’s body his whole world…

As the worst of the cold began to abate with the approach of dawn, it was that thought that soothed him enough to fall into the lightest of dozes, and he dreamed - dreamed of enfolding warmth and softness and _Cecil._

                  


	8. The Desert

Cecil woke disoriented. He was not sure where he would have expected to wake up, but it was certainly not slumped in the passenger seat of the jeep, barely able to feel his hands and feet and the ends of his tentacles, and with a sleeping Carlos apparently magnetically attached to his stomach. He flexed his fingers and toes, trying to regain sensation in them, rubbing his hands together to warm them when he realized that cold was the culprit of their numbness. He felt Carlos stir at the incidental movement, and he laid a hand atop his head to gently stroke his hair. When Carlos lifted his head to blink at Cecil blearily, Cecil saw that he did not look well; there were heavy bags under his eyes and his expression was particularly grim.

“Carlos, are you okay? Where are we? The last thing I remember is – the dart… but I guess we got away, right?” He offered a hopeful smile, but Carlos didn’t reciprocate, instead pulling away to reorient himself in the driver’s seat.

“We’re in the middle of the desert and we have no gas,” Carlos explained in a monotone, staring blankly out the windshield where the sun was climbing with ever-increasing heat over the flat gray-beige-yellow expanse of sand and scrub. “We only have whatever food and water might be in the jeep’s emergency kit, assuming they didn’t remove it when they set this up. There’s nothing around us for miles and miles, except for desert and, of course, things that want to kill us. So yeah, Cecil, we got away. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to survive.”

Cecil’s throat went dry. “Don’t talk like that – of course we’ll _survive_ ,” he said emphatically, trying to get Carlos to meet his gaze without success. “Miles and miles is a long way, but that doesn’t mean we can’t walk, right? I can figure out where we are, and I know the way to most of the bases, you know. It might take a few days, but we could get somewhere.”

“And what then?” said Carlos, finally turning and meeting Cecil’s eyes. “If we got to some bastion of civilization, what exactly would we do? Do you think the people there would welcome us? They can be just as dangerous as the things out in the desert. If not more.”

“A lot of the people know me, at least by sight,” Cecil reminded him.

“Yes, they know you – as something hungry for human flesh. And that’s not something they would want to invite in amongst them when it’s not necessary. Besides, didn’t it occur to you that management might have called up every base on your roster to warn them that you’re a killer and if you shadow their doorstep, you should be shot on sight?”

“I… I guess they could have done that, but – we could explain, couldn’t we?”

“Explain what? That we’re on the run because you ate the management liaison?”

Cecil wrapped his arms around his belly guiltily. “Well, obviously we wouldn’t tell them _that_ , but –”

“Okay, assuming they took us in, for whatever reason. What then? If we did manage to get anywhere, it would have taken days, if not weeks, and you know you’d be ravenous. Maybe, if they were uncommonly generous, they’d be willing to share their rations with me, but what would _you_ expect to eat?”

“Maybe there would be a corpse…”

“And maybe there wouldn’t be. And if there was one, they might already have called it in and another operative and handler might be on their way, which would be bad news for us.” Carlos looked away again, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

Cecil was quiet for a long moment, knowing that what he was going to say would probably only upset Carlos further, but he had to be pragmatic, since Carlos clearly didn’t intend to be. “We could _take_ what we needed,” he said finally, quietly.

Carlos looked up with such offended incredulity that Cecil actually recoiled. “Are you seriously suggesting that we rob and murder innocent people? What’s gotten into you? If you wanted to carry on killing, maybe you should’ve just taken the job management offered you.” His voice had gone so very, very cold.

Cecil took a steadying breath. “When I told you what happened to my last handler, I promised myself I was going to be honest with you from then on, so I’ll tell you the truth: I would have taken that job. I would have taken that job without a second thought, and I would have considered it the greatest windfall of my life. I’d have fallen on my knees to thank management and the sun and moon and whatever gods there might be for that job. But it would have meant hurting you, and I could never, ever do that. They were offering me comfort and pleasure and feasting for the rest of my life, and I still chose you. That’s how much you mean to me.” He bit his lip, seeking Carlos’s eyes, some part of him hoping that Carlos would respond by flinging himself on Cecil in a passionate kiss.

That was far from the reality of his response, however. The line of his mouth was hard, and there was a spark of something fierce in his dark eyes when he met Cecil’s. “You want credit, Cecil, is that it? You want me to tell you how good you are because for once in your life, you thought about someone else for half a second instead of yourself and your goddamn appetite? That’s not how this works, that’s not how any of this is supposed to work. And maybe you turning down the opportunity for all that live food might have meant a little more if you hadn’t been cramming a struggling woman down your greedy throat at the same time.”

“She told me to _kill you!”_ Cecil could feel himself trembling; Carlos had never spoken to him this way before, and it frightened him. Could Carlos really love him if he clearly thought so little of him and all that he had given up for him?

“She was relaying orders from management. Does that mean she deserved to die? Never mind, don’t answer that. She’s dead, it’s done, there’s no point in debating it. Are you satisfied?” There was a cold mockery in the question, and as he said it he lifted a hand and pressed it roughly against the side of Cecil’s belly, making its mostly-liquefied contents slosh and forcing a hiccup out of Cecil.

“ _Stop it,”_ Cecil said, his voice dropping instinctively to a low growl. He wrapped the tip of a tentacle around Carlos’s wrist and jerked it away from his body. “I get it, all right? You don’t have to manhandle me to make your point. Considering that this may have been my last meal for quite some time, or possibly my last meal ever, I’ll thank you not to upset my stomach.”

Carlos buried his face in his hands and was quiet for what felt like several minutes, but when he finally showed his face again, Cecil was relieved to see that he looked at least somewhat contrite. “I know I’m making this more black and white than it is. I _do_ know that. But… this is all really, really hard for me to deal with. You can understand that, right? I was raised on the principle that human life is sacrosanct, and I know, I know that you… weren’t. But even putting that whole question aside doesn’t make our current situation any easier to bear.”

“I understand.”

“And me complaining about it isn’t going to help anything.”

“Probably not.”

“We should try to get moving, if we’re going to get anywhere. Come on, let’s see what we have in the emergency kit.” He opened the door of the jeep and slid out, and Cecil followed suit on his side, meeting Carlos around the back of the jeep.

Carlos opened up the jeep’s trunk compartment, and Cecil saw him breathe a sigh of relief when he saw that it had not been emptied. He withdrew a spare set of clothes, first – khaki pants and a plain white shirt. “You should put these on,” he said, handing them to Cecil.

Cecil unfolded the shirt and held it up to himself, very much doubting that he would be able to get it on over his tentacles and his swollen belly. “Do I have to? It’s getting hot.”

“Exactly, it’s getting hot, and the sun will be right over our heads soon. You don’t want to burn.” He withdrew a second spare set of clothes and tore the thin t-shirt in half, winding half of it around his head like a makeshift turban.

Cecil acquiesced and donned the pants and shirt, though between the writhing protrusion of his tentacles at the back and the full curve of his stomach at the front, the shirt only covered him to the breastbone. When that was done, Carlos began tying the other half of the torn t-shirt around Cecil’s head the same way he had tied the first half around his own, and Cecil let him do it, though he couldn’t help but ask what exactly it was for, as he had never known Carlos to be particularly fond of headwear.

“Look around, Cecil. There’s no shade in sight and not a cloud in the sky. This will protect our heads at least a little bit from the sun, and prevent, or at least stave off, headaches and sun poisoning.”

“Oh,” said Cecil, “I didn’t know the sun was poisonous.” He knew what Carlos had meant, and said it mostly to lighten the mood, but Carlos did not even smile, and Cecil cast his eyes down and let Carlos finish tying the torn fabric around his head.

Carlos helped Cecil put a pair of old leather boots on his callused feet, and then he pulled two small, round water canteens, sloshing with their valuable liquid contents, from the trunk. As he handed one to Cecil, he said, “This is your most precious possession now. Guard it carefully, and only take a sip if you feel like you’d keel over if you didn’t.”

“Maybe you should take both of them,” Cecil said, trying to be helpful. “I won’t need anything to drink for a while. There’s a lot of fluid in a human body, see…”

Carlos shook his head. “We’ll divide everything evenly.” His tone booked no argument, so Cecil accepted the canteen and slipped its cloth strap over his shoulders, though silently he resolved to save his share for Carlos, if possible.

The small satchel remaining in the trunk compartment contained an emergency blanket, three granola bars with faded expiration dates ten years past, and a small flare gun. There weren’t any flares for the flare gun and it was not loaded, but as Carlos muttered under his breath, there wasn’t exactly anything whose attention they would want to attract out here anyhow. Nevertheless he kept the flare gun in the satchel as he slid it over his shoulder, and then he closed the emptied trunk compartment, sighed, and said, “Well, pick a direction. Any direction, except the one we came from.”

Cecil turned a circle slowly, trying to get an idea of where they were. The closest civilization, of course, was the base from which they had fled, but he tried to think of the next nearest bastion of human life. Finally, squinting southwest into the heat-shimmering sandy distance, he said, “This way.”

And, leaving the jeep behind, the two of them began to walk.

Cecil had to remind himself almost constantly not to complain. There were many, many things he found himself wanting to complain about as the day began to wear on. Walking for so long on a full stomach was not at all comfortable, and he constantly had to stifle hiccups and sharp burps in his fist as his belly cramped and sloshed. By afternoon his feet were sore from the boots, the too-tight shirt was conspiring with his sweat to chafe at the skin beneath his underarms, the backs of his eyes ached from staring at nothing but too-bright-too-hot-too-yellow sand and sky, the skin of his tentacles felt dried-out and itchy from the sun, and he desperately wanted a nap. But he would not, could not complain in front of Carlos, who was gazing at the horizon with steely-eyed determination, or worry, or maybe it was concern. Yes, it was probably concern. He would not ask to rest until Carlos said they could.

Carlos did not say they could until the sky in the west had turned purple and the unbearable, skin-baking heat had just begun to subside. Wordlessly he looked at Cecil, pointed to a cactus they were approaching, and then sat down in the long shadow of that cactus, opening his canteen and taking one cautious, measured sip, and only one, in spite of the way he was very nearly panting with thirst. Cecil sat down beside him, moaning with relief at finally being able to get off of his feet, and watched as Carlos very carefully calculated, removed, and ate exactly one-eighth of the first expired granola bar.

“Will we sleep here?” Cecil asked after a long moment, as he watched Carlos painstakingly close the wrapper back around the granola bar, taking care not to let even a single flake of stale oat fall out.

Carlos did not look at Cecil. He looked at the horizon, then up at the sky, which had begun to show stars, then at the cactus, then at the sky again. Finally he said, “Yes.”

Cecil nodded, and followed Carlos’s gaze up to the sky. It looked so vast, that rapidly darkening inky dome of void, speckled with the bright pinpricks of stars that seemed to be there only to make the rest of the emptiness bearable. “It’s beautiful,” he said thoughtfully after a moment. “The desert at night, I mean. I don’t often get to see it.”

“There’s a reason,” said Carlos quietly, lowering his eyes from the sky and looking around them. They were no longer sitting in a shadow, or, more accurate to say, the entire desert was now swathed in shadow. The sun had finished setting, and night was coming on in earnest, with all the dangers that entailed. The sand had gone blue; the cactus was blue; and the sky was bluer still, the bluest of all, the blackest and truest most infinite blue.

Carlos took out the emergency blanket and wrapped it around both of their bodies, guiding it around them until they were bound together tightly, conserving as much of their shared warmth as possible. Cecil wrapped his tentacles and his arms around Carlos as best he could, and then, in their blanket bundle, they laid down and huddled beneath the cactus and slept.

Nothing bothered them that night – at least nothing that woke either of them or left a mark. At the first light of dawn, Carlos woke, roused Cecil, and packed their blanket away despite the chill still lingering in the air, declaring that they needed to keep moving. As Carlos was arranging the blanket in the satchel and rationing out another swallow of water and eighth of a granola bar for himself, Cecil took note of the fact that his stomach had shrunk quite a lot overnight, digesting with more alacrity than usual, he supposed, to make up for the prodigious expenditure of energy that yesterday’s march had necessitated. He wondered how much longer it would be before he would have to add hunger pangs to the list of complaints he wouldn’t allow himself to voice.

The answer was less than half a day. From dawn until dusk, through the most brutal heat of the day, they walked, and walked, and walked. At dawn Cecil’s stomach had still been gurgling with digestion, but by midday it was growling with hunger. He did his best to ignore it as he was determinedly ignoring every other ache and pain developing as they marched along, but as usual when he was hungry, his appetite got the better of him. As he walked in silence at Carlos’s side, he gave himself over to a particularly pleasing fantasy in which he and Carlos stumbled upon an unknown civilization in the desert, where the people (all young and lithe and beautiful) claimed that they had been waiting all their lives for the opportunity to be eaten by one of Cecil’s kind. He and Carlos were treated like kings, and whenever Cecil rang a bell, an eager young man or woman would present him or herself to slip ever so willingly down Cecil’s throat, sleek and ripe as summer fruit. Then, as he was swallowing the luscious meal, Carlos would crawl on top of him and murmur words of love and encouragement, and kiss Cecil hard on the mouth, maybe while the willing meal’s feet or hands were still inside, letting Carlos’s probing tongue taste Cecil’s meal for a moment before Cecil finished swallowing it down. Then Carlos would pull back to look down at Cecil like he was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, curling tentacles and stuffed fattened belly full of live human and all, all of him, and he would do all the lovely things that he had done with Cecil at the dark pool and then some, combining the pleasures of a live, squirming meal with those that Carlos could bring on with his body. When they were done, lying sticky and sweaty and breathing in each other’s scent in heady mouthfuls, when the meal in Cecil’s belly no longer wriggled and gasped, Cecil would ring the bell again, and again, and again…

In reality, Cecil’s stomach whined, and the fantasy evaporated like the sweat on his skin beneath the relentless glare of the sun. He uncapped his water canteen and took a single sip the way he had seen Carlos do, not because he felt thirst, but just to swallow something more than his own saliva. On and on they went, and by late afternoon Cecil could feel that his skin was getting burnt, turning red and sore, and his tentacles had begun to peel, shedding thick flakes of blackish skin. _I will not complain._ But making suggestions did not seem off-limits, and so after hours of silence he cleared his throat and said, “Maybe it would be better to walk at night, rather than during the day. It’s so hot…”

Carlos shook his head. “Too dangerous at night,” he said tersely, the sandpaper roughness of his voice betraying his thirst. “Got to move while the sun’s up.”

Cecil tried again to give Carlos his water canteen, but Carlos waved it away. He did concede to take a sip from his own, though.

They walked until dusk, and this time as it grew dark there was nothing but scrublands for miles around, so they sat down in the open, feeling dangerously exposed. Once again Carlos bundled them together in the blanket and they laid down under the wide, wide sky. Carlos seemed to fall asleep quite quickly in his exhaustion. Cecil wanted to sleep, too, but the smell of Carlos’s body, pressed so close to his, all pungent sweat and sun-heated skin, was making his mouth water.

He barely slept that night, gazing up at the sky instead, watching a strange dark shape obscure the stars as it slowly circled the air above them like a patient vulture. When the sky began to lighten, the shape was gone, and Cecil nudged Carlos awake. The march began anew.

For days, it was the same. The desert around them varied little, and more than once Cecil wondered feverishly if they were somehow walking in circles. He could see that Carlos was growing weaker by the day, and increasingly so with each day that passed. Sometimes he would stumble and fall for no reason at all, and could not get up for several minutes. It was thirst, Cecil knew, malnutrition and thirst, for Carlos had only a precious few swallows of water left in his canteen, and all three expired granola bars had been eaten in spite of his best efforts to ration them. Carlos had gone dry like a bone, and did not sweat, no matter how hot the sun was above; the soft skin of his mouth was cracked and peeling, and there was a constant fevered look in his eye. Cecil had been forced to drink some of the water in his own canteen, for thirst had come upon him, too, once his body had finished with Pamela, but he finally did manage to get Carlos to accept a few sips of his supply.

Cecil, meanwhile, was getting hungry enough to worry about his self-control, and he walked at a distance from Carlos, and if there was a wind, upwind of him, so that he would not be tempted by his scent. At night it was harder, as they needed to be close to keep one another warm in the brutal cold, and so Cecil rarely was able to sleep, spending his nights instead murmuring a repeating list of the reasons why he must not eat Carlos, finding it harder to convince himself with each passing day. “ _I love him I love him I love him,”_ he muttered in a harsh staccato rhythm, biting the inside of his cheek as punishment for the way his stomach had growled, deep and longing, when he had let himself, just for a moment, imagine sliding Carlos’s head into his jaws.

One dusk, rather than sitting down and pulling out the blanket, Carlos collapsed unceremoniously to the ground, his shaky legs giving out beneath him. He lay there unmoving, and Cecil knelt beside him, relieved to see that his eyes were open and he was still breathing. He uncapped his own canteen and tilted Carlos’s head up to pour the water over his lips, but less than a sip’s worth came out before Cecil’s canteen was as empty as Carlos’s was now. “That’s the last of it, isn’t it?” Carlos said, his voice so rough, so dry, so painful.

Cecil could only nod. There was no use in lying about it.

After what felt like a long moment of silence, Carlos croaked out, “I’m not going to make it, Cecil.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true. No water left. No food left. I can barely walk now. And no civilization in sight. It’s over. The desert won.”

“Stop it, Carlos.” Cecil’s eyes stung, but he was too dehydrated for tears.

Carlos shook his head weakly. “Cecil, you can keep going. Maybe you could make it somewhere. If you fed now, you could go another week, maybe more. And then you might get somewhere.”

“If I fed now…?” Cecil did not like where this was going. His stomach, however, did, and gave an eager growl.

Carlos gestured feebly to himself, lying supine as he was. “I’m going to die one way or another now. I’d rather choose the way I go, and if there’s a possibility that I can give you strength to keep going, well, I want to do that.”

“No. _No_. You’ll live, Carlos, you have to live. I can carry you on my back tomorrow, you don’t have to walk, you can conserve your energy, and I’ll – I’ll find you water, somewhere, somehow…”

Carlos just shook his head. “This is the only way. One of us can keep going, or we can both die out here.”

“Then we’ll both die,” Cecil said, laying down beside Carlos, pressing a fist into his abdomen in an effort to smother his body’s enthusiastic response to the contrary.

“That’s not what I want. Don’t you want to give me the last thing it’s in my power to ask for? You owe me that, Cecil.” Carlos turned his head and put his cracked, chapped lips to Cecil’s. There was not enough energy between the two of them for there to be passion in the kiss, but there was tenderness, and acceptance.

“What will I do without you? What will the point of it be? It’s you who changed my world, Carlos, it was for you that I left home. I don’t want to go on without you…”

“I’ll be with you.” Carlos laid a hand on Cecil’s stomach, making it rumble with want.

“You won’t,” Cecil said, grief turning to anger, his throat tight with the tears he could not cry. “You’ll be used up and you’ll be gone. You’ll be gone, forever. It’s easy for you to just give up – easy for you to try to make this into something romantic and noble, but I’m the one who has to live with it, I’m the one who has to keep going. Dying is easy. You’re taking the easy way out.”

“Please, Cecil.” Carlos sounded so very tired. “I don’t have the energy to argue with you. You’re right, I’m giving up, and I’m sorry. I am. But I just want to give you something with my death. And I want to be warm when I die…” He had begun to shiver weakly in the rising night wind, the knife-like chill of it.

“You… want me to swallow you alive?”

Carlos nodded.

“And if, halfway down my throat, you can’t breathe or see or move and you panic and decide this isn’t what you want?”

“I won’t.”

Having a willing live meal was something Cecil had fantasized about for as long as he could remember, but he found that in real life the idea had none of the savor that it did in his head. He understood now that real willingness was not the attractive zeal he imagined in fantasy; it was just resignation, the sign of a person being truly and utterly broken. And the reality of death, which was so easy to gloss over in an imagined situation, cast a black pall over any pleasure he might have been able to take in the act. He was not sure why it felt so wrong to kill someone who was asking to be killed, when he had not much minded killing his former handler or Pamela Winchell, both of whom had clearly expressed that they did _not_ want to be killed. Perhaps it was because that was the natural order of things, death coming where it wasn’t wanted, a predator feeding on prey that did not want to be fed on. And perhaps it was just because this was Carlos, and it meant that Carlos had broken enough inside to ask for death, to ask for this particular, intimate death. It was a hollow shell of Cecil’s fantasy of the ultimate closeness with Carlos, a cruel mockery of that desire, and Cecil wanted none of it.

But Carlos and Cecil’s ravenous stomach were conspiring against him, and Cecil found himself tugging off Carlos’s lab coat, then his shirt, then his jeans, then his shoes. Carlos did not resist, and even tried to help remove his clothing where he could, despite how much more he shivered in the cold once he was naked. With his clothes off, it was clear how emaciated Carlos had become, how he had wasted away beneath the desert sun without food or water. He was still beautiful to Cecil, but it was a sharp, brittle, unhealthy beauty now, the beauty of the precipice, of the last breath before stillness.

Carlos gave Cecil his hands. Cecil took them in his own and, eyes locked on Carlos’s, raised them to his mouth. He parted his lips slowly, reverently, ignoring the urgency in his body that was begging him to taste, to swallow, to finally _eat_. He kissed each of Carlos’s fingertips before he would let himself lick them, and he groaned at the taste, desperate and needy but wanting so badly not to have to do this, to be given some reason, any reason, to stop. But Carlos was not giving him one, and apparently he was taking too long, because with a strength he hadn’t seemed to have left, Carlos shoved his hands in, pressing his knuckles to the back of Cecil’s throat, and there was nothing Cecil could do but swallow reflexively, drawing both of Carlos’s hands into the tight slick confines of his gullet and pulling his forearms into Cecil’s jaws. Instinct made Cecil want to swallow in rapid succession, to pull in more of Carlos as quickly as he could, but he was determined to make this slow, to give Carlos every opportunity to change his mind. As he gave a painfully slow, languid gulp, pulling Carlos’s arms in just slightly further, he refused to allow himself to think of the sweet relief he would feel when his stomach began to fill, when Carlos’s body began to stretch its walls. If he succumbed to that thought, he knew, he would not be able to help himself, would not be able to stop even if Carlos asked him to.

He kept his eyes on Carlos’s the whole time, searching for the first sign of panic or regret, but Carlos’s dark eyes remained glazed and inscrutable. He found himself wishing he had told Carlos that he loved him one more time, but now his mouth was full and it was too late to say anything at all. He swallowed again, hating himself, hating Carlos for making him do this but god, it felt _so good_ to be eating something, and soon his stomach would be full and he’d… he’d… _No. Nononononono. Carlos, tell me to stop. Please, just tell me to stop._ Carlos said nothing. Cecil swallowed again. _Gl-ulk._ Carlos’s elbows slid into his throat.

Cecil kept his eyes on Carlos’s face, and through the haze of hunger and need and regret he noticed something peculiar. Carlos’s face was no longer tinged with the bluish color of moonlight and the desert night. Peculiar colors danced over his cheekbones and the whites of his eyes, first pink, now green, now blue, now yellow. And for the first time Carlos’s eyes broke their contact with Cecil’s to flick upwards, and whatever he saw there made his mouth fall open and his eyes go even glassier than before. Cecil followed his gaze upward as much as having Carlos’s arms halfway down his throat would allow, and what he saw was almost enough to make him forget what was happening and what Carlos had asked of him.

The sky was no longer an empty blue-black dome, mostly void, partially stars. It was almost completely obscured by a vast, roiling cloud, a world unto itself, a sea of twisting, bulging vapors. It was a _glowing_ cloud, colors dancing through its seemingly endless form, painting the desert night below with fantastical hues. Its presence filled all of Cecil’s vision, and then all of Cecil’s mind, and his mouth and throat went slack, slack enough that Carlos’s arms slid bonelessly out of the gullet that had held them so tightly. His mouth framed the words: “All hail the Glow Cloud. _All hail._ ” And faintly he was aware of Carlos’s voice saying it too. He could not think any more than that.

Carlos could not think either, but nor did he have the strength left to keep sitting up. He collapsed back to the sand, gazing vacantly up at the Glow Cloud, feeling as though his heart was slowing – no, _slurring_ in his chest, as though a heart could be drunk. This was not how he had wanted to die, he managed to think, even as his mouth continued to say, “ _All hail the Glow Cloud.”_ He had wanted to die warm, and surrounded by Cecil, and the universe was not even going to allow him to have that. He wept without tears and sobbed, “All hail. All hail.”

And then dark things began to fall from the cloud-filled sky, dark heavy things that hit the sand with fleshy thuds. Dead animals were raining from the sky, and out of the corner of his eye Carlos saw Cecil pounce on the carcass of a fawn, saw him stuffing it down his throat with the harsh crunch of bones. Well, at least Cecil could go on after all, then, Carlos thought, his eyes fluttering shut. _He doesn’t need me._

Carlos had nearly fallen unconscious – whether it was simply unconsciousness or that great final unconsciousness, he would never know – when he felt something looming over him. Something was shoved into his face, something with a musky overpowering animal scent and slight bouquet of rot, and something warm and sticky and wet was pouring out all over his face and neck. As his mouth opened in parched desperation for the fluid, he recognized the salt-metal taste of blood, but it did not matter; it was liquid and he needed it. He drank deeply and desperately with a feeling of being reborn, and his heart stuttered back toward a normal rhythm.

Cecil held the dead buck’s blood-pouring neck against Carlos’s mouth, its torn-out throat still in his teeth. He swallowed the chunk of flesh and threw his head back to howl at the sky with slavish ecstasy, “ _All hail the mighty Glow Cloud. All hail.”_


	9. The Sandstorm

Cecil woke at the first light of dawn, sprawled flat on his back with his tentacles spread-eagled in six directions beneath him. The first thing he was aware of was that, for the first time in days, his stomach was not empty; for the first time in days, it was the brightening sky that woke him and not the stabbing pain of a hunger pang cramping his vacant guts. For a sweet moment that was all that he knew – not troubled by any thought of past or future but simply relishing the relief of knowing that, at least for now, he was not starving.

But that untroubled moment could not last, as jumbled memories of the night before began to flood his brain. His mind felt hazy; he could not remember falling asleep, could not remember anything at all after… after… He felt as though his heart physically clenched in his chest as he realized that the last thing he could remember was swallowing Carlos’s arms, his elbows in Cecil’s throat and his upper arms halfway into Cecil’s mouth, their gazes locked, that glassy look of despair in Carlos’s eyes. He could not remember anything after that, but surely the fact that his stomach was full now must mean that he had done it, that he had finished swallowing down his beloved Carlos. His body must have taken over, he thought, blacking out his conscious mind in its raw desperation to feed itself, and then when he had finished wolfing down his poor sweet scientist, he must have passed out.

“Oh no, oh no, _oh no_ ,” he whimpered in mounting distress, sitting up to look down in horror at the outward curve of his stomach. He pressed a shaking hand into the side of it and felt its contents slosh, pulling a low gurgle from within. Not much solidity there. Dead, no question about that. Not that he had expected any better, given that he must have been digesting all night. “This isn’t how it was supposed to be,” he said, choked with tears. “Carlos, oh, Carlos, why did you make me do that? I didn’t want to, I didn’t, _Carlos_ …” He gave a strangled sob.

Suddenly, he heard a groan from somewhere to his right, the sound of stirring. “Ugh… Cecil?” Carlos’s voice, unmistakably. Cecil would know it anywhere.

He hardly dared to turn and look, hardly dared to hope. “C-Carlos?” Finally, swallowing his tears, he turned his head to see, and there on the sand lay Carlos, weak and bony as he had been the day before but nonetheless definitely alive, whole, and undigested. “Oh!” he cried in ecstatic relief, throwing himself upon Carlos and kissing every bit of skin he could get his mouth on, which turned out to be quite a lot, as Carlos was still naked. “You’re alive!” He pressed his mouth to Carlos’s, kissing him hard, feeling the brush of the coarse hair of the beard Carlos had begun to grow, tasting the sharp, delicious tang of dried blood on Carlos’s lips.

“I am,” Carlos affirmed after their mouths had parted, and he sounded as surprised by that fact as Cecil was. “What… what happened last night?”

“I don’t know,” Cecil said hesitantly, but the taste of the blood on Carlos’s lips had stirred something in him, a vision like a half-remembered dream. Colors in the sky, warm rich blood on his tongue, his voice vibrating so low and deep within him that he could feel it like the rumble of thunder in his chest as he repeated the same words over and over, the words that had come from somewhere outside him and bubbled up implacably through him, words he could not remember now… “If it wasn’t you, what did I eat?” he said after a moment, frowning in perplexity at his stomach as it gurgled merrily away at its mysterious contents.

With a weak grunt of effort, Carlos managed to sit up. “I imagine you ate one of those,” he said, making a sweeping gesture to their surroundings.

Cecil turned his gaze to follow the gesture and see what Carlos was talking about, and his eyes widened at what he saw. He had been so caught up in the dread of thinking that he had eaten Carlos, and then in the relief of finding Carlos alive, that he had not even noticed the animal carcasses littering the desert around them – some animals Cecil had seen hundreds of times before, like deer and hares and sand lizards, and some he had never seen in his life: large hooved things with stripes, maned felines bigger than any dragoncat, and bloated saurian cousins of sand lizards, long jaws open in the dry gape of death, among others.

“We’re saved,” Cecil said rapturously, finding Carlos’s hand with his own and squeezing it without taking his eyes off the tableau of dead meat, afraid that if he looked away it might vanish like a mirage. “Look… at all this… _food_.” He had begun to pant as his eyes took it all in, the enormity of the amount of flesh that these animals comprised.

            “Cecil. Cecil, look at me.” It took a moment for Carlos to get Cecil’s attention back, but when he had it he said, “We don’t know where this came from or if it’s a trap. Yes, it’s a good thing, but we have to exercise some caution, okay? Windfalls like this don’t just happen with no strings attached.”

            Cecil nodded, but all he was thinking about was how many different kinds of animals he was going to get to taste. Nothing was better than human, he knew that, but still, the smorgasbord of variety was inviting. His mouth watered.

            “And I know you want to feast, but first I need you to help _me_ eat. I don’t have a knife or anything, so I’m going to need your teeth to cut me some pieces of meat small enough for me to eat. Can you do that?”

            “Of course, Carlos. Anything. Which one do you want?”

Carlos considered the options and conservatively said, “Deer.”

Cecil dragged the nearest deer carcass to them with his tentacles. He tore into the soft flesh of its belly, tearing out the rich-tasting liver, which came free in a gush of blood and pale fluids. Resisting the urge to swallow the organ himself, he deposited it in his hands and held it out to Carlos, bloody and steaming slightly in the early morning air.

Carlos shook his head. “Smaller pieces than that. I can’t swallow something nearly that big, and I don’t have the energy to gnaw that into pieces I could get down.”

Cecil tore the liver roughly into quarters, but still Carlos said it was too large. It took several repetitions of the process before Carlos would accept the liver, and by then it was in pieces small enough to hold between thumb and forefinger. Cecil shook his head as he watched Carlos carefully chew each little morsel of meat, unable to understand how humans ate anything, let alone how they survived on the small amounts that they did eat.

Carlos was taking a long time to eat the liver, so Cecil turned his attention to the deer, slurping down soft organ meat from its open abdominal cavity. It was a large buck, too big for Cecil to swallow whole without considerable struggle and possible injury, and anyway he was not going to waste space in his stomach on harder-to-digest fur and hooves and bones when there was so much meat and fat and supple organ flesh to be eaten. He drank still-warm blood from the deer’s heart before wrenching it free and swallowing it.

When he turned to check on Carlos some time later, he saw that Carlos had finished eating the liver and had also put his clothes back on. “More?” Cecil asked, proffering a slimy handful of entrails, but Carlos shook his head, laying a hand over his stomach. “It’s been so long since I had anything even this substantial. If I eat too much at once, I’ll get sick; my body will reject it. The fact that it’s raw will be hard enough on my system as it is. I’ll have more in a few hours.”

Cecil shook his head in disbelief at the idea that Carlos’s body apparently could not handle more than one measly liver when he had not eaten for days, but Carlos was a scientist and he knew these things, so Cecil did not question him. Instead, he moved on to the next nearest corpse, one of the large reptilian things, and tore into its scaly flank.

It must have been hours that Cecil spent eating. He would eat all the choicest parts of one dead animal before moving on to the next, his belly getting heavier with each carcass he fed on. He was well past full but he did not want to stop, did not ever want to stop. There had been moments in the desert since their escape when he had believed with utter certainty that he was going to die without ever eating again, and now that he was miraculously able to glut himself without limit, he wanted it to last forever. Occasionally he would hear cautionary words coming from Carlos – “Don’t eat so much that you can’t walk” and “Don’t make yourself sick” and the like, but he would just wave a tentacle in dismissive acknowledgement as he continued to gorge himself.

He was only able to stop when he felt as though he physically couldn’t swallow another bite. By that point it was midday and the heat was brutal, the sun practically cooking all the dead flesh and making the smell of meat even heavier on the air. Cecil crawled back to Carlos, his heavy belly dragging on the hot sand, collapsing beside him and letting his head come to rest on Carlos’s thigh.

Carlos shook his head as he brushed the hair back from Cecil’s brow, but it seemed to Cecil that he was very faintly smiling. “You could have tried a little restraint. I think you pushed your stomach to its limit,” he said, though his slightly playful tone suggested that he had expected nothing less.

“So much food,” was all Cecil had to say on the matter, sighing with pleasure. He noticed that Carlos had placed a dead hare near his foot, so he said, “You want to eat that?”

Carlos shook his head. “I was trying to ascertain cause of death. To figure out where all this came from.”

“Oh,” Cecil said, closing his eyes and rubbing his belly with a soft burp. He did not much care where it had all come from, he was just glad that it was there. But he knew such a mystery would be irresistible to Carlos’s scientific mind, so he added, “And?”

There was a slightly troubled pause before Carlos said, “Idiopathic.”

Cecil did not know what that meant, but he was perfectly content to accept that answer, even if Carlos didn’t seem to be. He closed his eyes to doze lightly while Carlos carried on about the dead animals, saying things like “post-mortem trauma” and “delayed rigor mortis” and other similar phrases that did not mean much of anything to Cecil. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d have to conclude that they just fell out of the sky,” Carlos finally remarked in bemusement, picking up the dead hare again as if a second look might resolve the mystery.

“Don’t forget to drink,” Cecil reminded him sleepily. “You need to drink.”

“There’s still no water, Cecil.”

“There’s blood, and plenty of it.”

Carlos gave a bit of a grimace, but after a moment he nodded and said, “I’ll have the hare.”

Without moving from his supine position, Cecil took the hare from Carlos and tore out a chunk of meat from just below its head, then held the body up to Carlos, who accepted it and drank the fluid draining from the wound with his eyes screwed shut in a look of revulsion, but Cecil didn’t miss the little whimper of relief Carlos made between swallows. His body was clearly desperate for the liquid, regardless of the form it came in. When he had finished, Cecil offered to tear up some pieces of meat so Carlos could have more to eat, and this time Carlos conceded. As Cecil ripped the dead hare into chunks, Carlos pulled out the blanket and draped it loosely over both of them to shield them from the worst of the glare from the burning yellow eye of the sun directly above.

Cecil was handing morsels of meat up to Carlos when Carlos said, “Cecil, I… I wanted to say that… that I…” He trailed off then, averting his eyes as he popped one of the little chunks of rabbit meat into his mouth and began to chew it thoughtfully.

“What is it?” Cecil pressed, withholding further pieces of hare. He was not sure exactly what he expected Carlos to say, but he was suddenly acutely aware of his own heartbeat, speeding up slightly in anticipation of something.

Carlos delicately swallowed the meat in his mouth, still apparently unable to meet Cecil’s eyes. Finally, anticlimactically, he said, “I just wanted to say thanks. For the meat.”

“Oh,” said Cecil, who was disappointed, though he couldn’t say exactly why. He hadn’t had his hopes up that Carlos would say anything more profound, had he? In his mind’s eye he rewound the scene, envisioned Carlos saying instead, “I just wanted to say that I love you.” He sighed and banished the fantasy, proffering another sticky chunk of flesh to Carlos. He would not press the matter.

But Carlos surprised him by sighing and saying, “That’s not… okay, that’s not what I wanted to say. I guess I’m just not very good at this.” Cecil’s heart started jackhammering again, but what Carlos said was, “I wanted to apologize. For last night. I never should have… God, it was monstrous of me to ask that of you, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Cecil.” His voice broke a little, which he tried to conceal by eating another piece of hare.

“It’s okay,” said Cecil automatically, although it wasn’t. “I… understand? I mean, I think I do. You were in a lot of pain and you wanted out. That’s not something you have to be sorry for.”

“Maybe not, but I do have to be sorry for asking you to end it for me. I thought… I don’t know what I thought. I thought I would be giving you a gift, I guess. That I’d be giving you what you really wanted anyway. But now I feel like an idiot. You’re so much more than this,” he said, laying a hand gently on Cecil’s swollen stomach, which burbled at the contact. “I _know_ that. And I want you to know that I know that.”

Cecil softened. “I love you, Carlos.”

Carlos smiled. “I know you do. And after last night, I really, truly believe it.” He leaned down to brush Cecil’s bloody lips with his own, upside-down because of the way Cecil was laying.

Cecil closed his eyes and focused on the feeling of Carlos’s lips on his own. _It’s enough,_ he thought, _for now, it’s enough. When he’s ready, he’ll say it back._

When Carlos pulled away, they stayed in silence for a while, Carlos’s chewing of the morsels of rabbit Cecil handed to him and the gurgle of Cecil’s stomach at work on all the animal flesh he had packed into it the only sounds in their makeshift pool of shade beneath the blanket. Eventually Carlos said, “We should talk about what’s next for us. Try to plan ahead.”

Cecil, roused from his doze by Carlos’s voice, yawned, muffled a hiccup, and replied, “You can’t really plan ahead of the desert, can you? If we’ve learned anything from all this, I think it would have to be that.”

“That’s true,” Carlos conceded, “But there are still some things we should consider. I mean, I don’t think we should stay here past nightfall if we can help it.”

“Mm? Why not?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Carlos gestured at the desert around them, with the animal carcasses baking in the hot sun. “We’re not the only hungry things out here. The longer all this meat is out here, the stronger the smell of it is going to get, and the more likely something unpleasant will show up – something that might not distinguish between the dead meat and us.”

Cecil knew he was right, but the thought of abandoning proximity to the life-saving banquet of flesh was excruciating. “We can’t exactly move, though,” he protested. “You’re still so weak. Can you even walk? I don’t want to find out the hard way that you can’t. And I don’t think it’s a good idea to walk away from our only source of food…”

Carlos sighed. “If it’s between not eating and being eaten, I don’t think we have much choice.”

“That’s not the choice you made last night,” Cecil said, quietly.

For a moment, Carlos looked angry – truly angry, a flash of something Cecil had never seen in his dark eyes before. “That’s not –” He bit his lip and paused for what felt like a long time before he said, with slow deliberation, that furious spark in his eyes extinguished, “That’s not fair.”

“Maybe not, but it’s true, isn’t it?” Cecil didn’t want to press, knew he shouldn’t, but he was still upset by last night, by the image of that empty-eyed, implacable Carlos who had asked him, without sadness or hesitation – only exhaustion, such deep exhaustion – to end his life. He had the feeling that that image was going to haunt him for a very long time.

“I already apologized,” said Carlos, the hard set of his mouth betraying the effort he was expending to maintain his composure. “Do we have to keep talking about it?”

“I’m sorry. It’s just… I don’t understand. I know I said that I do, but I don’t. I would give anything for more time with you, for more time in this life if it meant I could spend it by your side, and last night just shows that you don’t feel the same way. That you’d abandon me…” He felt his voice breaking as the words spilled out, and he understood his feelings only as they voiced themselves. “You didn’t even want to die together, you wanted to go on to wherever the dead go – the abyss or paradise or endless nothingness or whatever it is – you wanted to go _without me._ ” It was not the fact that Carlos had wanted to die that had cut him the most deeply; it was that Carlos had been willing to leave Cecil behind. He choked back a wretched sound that was a half a hiccup and half a strangled sob.

“Cecil.” Carlos’s voice was gentle, but tired. “You’ve got it all wrong. I just wanted to be as close to you as possible. At the end. I don’t know where the dead go, but scientifically we can’t prove that they go anywhere at all. The body is the only thing that’s quantifiable. So I wanted my body… to feed into yours. I’m not saying it makes perfect sense. But I guess what I’m trying to say is that what I asked, I asked out of love. I see now how it was selfish. I do. But in the moment I thought it was the most selfless thing I had ever thought to do. Honestly.”

It was not exactly an _I love you_ , but it was damn close, and Cecil felt all manner of emotions tying up his insides in knots. The grief at having come so close to losing Carlos was still there, but it was tangled up with the giddy effervescent feeling of having just a little more confirmation that Carlos really did care for him. And he wasn’t unaware of the echo in Carlos’s words of those that he himself had used to try to explain his fantasies: _it was about being as close to you as possible_. Perhaps their minds did not work so differently after all.

Silence hung in the hot air for a few moments before Cecil said, “All right, we can leave before nightfall, but let’s stay as long as we can before that. You should eat more before we leave all this, and I need some time to digest.”

“Sounds good.” Carlos sounded relieved that Cecil had allowed the graver subject to drop. “It looked like you tried most of the animals out there. Any favorites?” His tone was light, no doubt trying to inject some levity to their conversation, and as he spoke he gently pulled off the cloth tied around Cecil’s head so that he could card through Cecil’s hair with one hand.

“I liked them all,” Cecil said, letting his hand ghost over the stretched skin of his swollen stomach, relishing the feel of its fullness after so long with nothing. “I think I was too glad just to be eating to really discern one hunk of meat from the next.”

“Still, it must be nice to try some variety. Usually you have to eat the same thing all the time.” Carlos’s finger lightly circled Cecil’s ear, and he leaned his head into the touch.

“Mhm, but I don’t mind that. Human is my favorite.”

“I guess that makes sense. You… might not get to have it much from here on out, you know.”

“I know.” He was quiet for a moment before he added, “Even if we survive this, nothing is ever going to be as easy as before, is it?”

“No, it’s not.”

Silence fell, and Cecil let himself be lulled by Carlos’s gentle touches circling around his ears and carding through his hair. Between that soothing sensation and the fullness of his stomach, it was easy to fall asleep again, and he slept soundly as midday slid into afternoon and then slouched toward evening.

He was woken by Carlos shaking his shoulder with more urgency than he would have thought necessary. “Cut it out, I’m awake,” he grumbled in annoyance, still struggling to will his eyes open; his body wanted very much to go on sleeping.

But when Carlos said Cecil’s name, there was a harsh directness in Carlos’s voice that made Cecil sit up and hasten to rub the sleep from his eyes. “What is it?” he asked, blinking to adjust his eyes to the oncoming twilight before turning to search Carlos’s face.

Carlos was staring off into the distance, and Cecil turned to follow his gaze. The sky was just starting to darken, sliding into a deeper shade of blue, but the horizon was much darker than it ought to have been, almost as if a storm cloud hung in the air there. A storm cloud very close to the earth. A storm cloud that was growing larger and darker by the second.

“Sandstorm,” Cecil mouthed in horror, and as he said it he felt the wind starting to pick up, tugging the blanket away from Carlos’s shoulders and ruffling the pelts of the dead animals still littering the desert before them.

“We have to run,” said Carlos, but the flat way in which he said it suggested that he knew full well they were not going to be able to outrun it. He cast off the blanket and staggered unsteadily to his feet; Cecil extended a helping tentacle to help him keep his balance. As he stood too, he tried not to think about how unlikely it was that he and Carlos would have been able to outrun the sandstorm even if they had been at full strength rather than weak and half-starved from the tribulations of the desert.

Carlos took Cecil’s hand. “Whatever happens, don’t let go, okay? No matter what.”

Cecil squeezed Carlos’s hand hard, his heart in his throat. “I won’t. No matter what,” he echoed, and he met Carlos’s eyes for a moment, watching the dying light reflect in his dark eyes, watching the increasingly violent wind whip his perfect hair across his face.

And then, hand in hand, they were running.

It hurt to run. For Cecil, it was the bone-deep ache that radiated through his lately overused and underfed body with every footfall, coupled with the sharp cramping that came with overexerting himself on a full stomach. For Carlos, it went beyond that; it was as if he could feel his organs edging closer to failing with each stumbling stride he forced himself to take, his lungs screaming for more oxygen than he could give them, every dry panting breath searing his parched throat. He felt as if the blood he had had to drink had dried into a crusty iron-tasting patina at the back of his throat that absorbed whatever saliva his dehydrated body could secrete, and it made him feel like he was choking on every gulp of air. The only thing that kept him moving forward was Cecil’s hand in his own, and he clutched onto it like a lifeline.

They kept running as the wind whipped at their backs, as the darkness gathered around them and flecks of sand began to sting their eyes and mouths. They ran knowing they would not escape. They ran because there was nothing to do but run. And the sandstorm caught up with them, as they had known all along that it must. Buffeted by the wind, forced to screw their eyes shut to protect them from the crashing waves of airborne sand, Carlos and Cecil staggered blindly, holding onto each other for dear life.

Even more than the screaming wind and stinging sands of the storm, Cecil feared he was going to vomit. The way the running and the terror had stirred a nauseous gurgling in the pit of his stomach panicked him on a visceral level; he couldn’t handle the thought of losing the greater part of the meat in his belly, of going back to an empty stomach, back to starvation. It was too much. And so when he felt a liquid heat at the back of his throat, heralded by a nauseous belch, he automatically clapped his hands to his mouth as if he could hold down his meal by force. It was only after a hard swallow that he realized what he had done. Both of his hands were over his mouth; he had let go of Carlos. Frantic, he reached for where Carlos’s hand had been a second before, but his fingers closed only on sand and air. _“Carlos!”_ he screamed, and then coughed and wheezed as sand invaded his mouth and nose. His call was swallowed by the roar of the wind. He could see nothing around him but darkness and the swirling sand.

He staggered in the direction he thought Carlos must be, waving his arms and tentacles blindly in front of him in the hopes of finding the solidity of Carlos’s shape. He kept calling for Carlos when he could, even though opening his mouth wide enough to speak only invited more sand to assault his windpipe. In between calls of Carlos’s name, Cecil kept himself from breathing to minimize the sand getting into his lungs. Like all of his kind, he could hold his breath considerably longer than any human ever could, a trait necessary to swallowing large prey without suffocating. But every time he yelled Carlos’s name, he let out a little of the air in his lungs, and because of that he was not going to be able to go much longer without inhaling. And when he did, the sand, almost thick as water now, would come rushing in, choking and scraping and possibly even suffocating him. He didn’t dare contemplate the fact that Carlos may have already been felled that way. _How could I have let go of him?! Stupid, stupid, stupid…_

After what seemed an eternity, after Cecil felt sure that he could not go another minute without dragging a breath heavy with choking, searing sand into his lungs, the thickness of the sand in the air seemed to abate slightly, the wailing scream that had become the omnipresent voice of the wind receding to a dull roar. As the air cleared enough to see a few feet in front of him, Cecil discerned a human silhouette, and he nearly wept with relief. He didn’t dare say Carlos’s name for fear of losing the last bit of air his lungs were still holding on to, but he staggered toward the figure as fast as he could, keeping his eyes trained on it even though flying sand stung them painfully and made his eyelids feel like sandpaper. He had almost reached him – a few more steps and he would be close enough to touch him – he’d –

_That’s not Carlos._

That was his first thought as he got close enough to see the figure through the flying sands. His second thought was:

_That isn’t human._

The sandstorm was dying down fast; soon enough the air had cleared enough that he could clearly see the face of the thing he was looking at. And his third thought, the most terrifying thought that sent a jolt of pure fear down his spine, was: _That looks like me._

While Cecil did not have nearly as much opportunity to regard himself in a mirror as he understood that humans did, he was aware of what he looked like. He did not live in a world devoid of reflections, and where he did find them, he enjoyed watching his reflection copy his every move. He enjoyed pushing his hair around and raking his fingers through it until it looked just the way he liked it. He enjoyed how, looking at his teeth, he could find and extract annoying little bits of clothing or other extraneous things that had gotten caught in them when he fed. And the quizzical look of his own jewel-bright eyes gazing back at him was a pleasant reminder that he was alive and aware, no matter how often he might be treated as nothing more than a tool.

But this was not like looking at his reflection.

_His hair and nose are like mine, but his eyes…_

This creature’s eyes were black as obsidian. They did not seem differentiated by pupil or iris or sclera; there was only black, endless liquid pools of black like the gleaming eyes of some insect. And that _smile –_ oh, no… that was _not_ a smile. Sharp teeth stretched from ear to ear in a permanent rictus grin, the mouth lipless, the structure of teeth meeting bone plainly visible beneath thin-stretched skin. Rather than tentacles at his back, this creature had more angular appendages, sharp segmented protrusions like the black legs of a particularly unsightly spider. He was clad in gear similar to that which Cecil had worn before, although this gear was yellow rather than black. And around this abomination’s neck was what Cecil could only describe as a collar, as yellow as his gear. Cecil did not know how to read, but he understood that the black symbols on that collar formed some kind of word, and though he could not fathom what word it might be, it still made him shudder.

The collar said STREXCORP®.

Cecil knew deeper than he had ever known anything that this creature was wicked. And so when the abomination took a step toward him, he snarled and sprang on it, wrapped his tentacles around its arms, wrapped his hands around its collar-bound throat. He wanted to kill this thing, but he did not want to eat it, nor even bite it or let his mouth come anywhere near it. It was... unclean. Wretched. Grotesque. And as he tightened his hands around its neck, the horrible permanent grin did not falter, and the black pit-eyes did not blink. He felt repulsed beyond describing as he stared into this face that was his own and yet not his own, this monstrous reflection, and he willed it to die with all his might, willed it to disintegrate back into the sand which seemed to have brought it.

But it did not. Cecil felt a sharp pain as one of the spider-like appendages poked into his shoulder with its spear-like tip, breaking the skin, and flicked upward with surprising strength, knocking Cecil backward. He sprawled onto the ground, his grip on the monster broken, and he gazed up at it with utter hatred, his teeth bared, a growl deeper and more feral than any that had ever issued from his throat making his chest rumble.

“Oh, Vanessa!” said a sickeningly saccharine voice that Cecil knew must be coming from the monster, though its mouth with its frozen grin did not move to form the words. “You’d better come have a look at this. I think I’ve found a new friend!”

A human woman appeared at the creature’s side. She had a shotgun slung casually over one shoulder, and she was wearing standard khaki desert clothing, but over that she had a yellow jacket with the same emblem as the monster’s collar; her sandy brown hair was tied up in a practical ponytail, and though her eyes were not black like the demon’s, they somehow seemed almost as empty. “My name is _Lauren_ , Kev,” the woman said in a tone almost as bright as the monster’s, though there was a biting edge to it.

“And mine is _Kevin,_ ” responded the creature with an equally unpleasant undertone, though on the surface his voice was still impossibly cheerful. “Anyway, look here. I think he must be from the Vale. Isn’t that exciting?”

Lauren-not-Vanessa nodded thoughtfully. “I wonder how he ended up out here. Well, actually, I don’t. It’s not our job to wonder. Let’s get him in the truck.”

Cecil snarled and scrambled to his feet, tentacles arched and poised like so many scorpion tails at the ready to defend himself, but Lauren leveled her shotgun at him and trilled, “Easy way or hard way, it’s up to you!”

The monster named Kevin made an expression that suggested, if he had had discernible eyes that were not completely black, he must be rolling them. “There’s no need to be so _melodramatic_ , Lauren. We want to be _friends,_ remember? And nothing facilitates friendship like a good sedative.”

Lauren, apparently conceding, slung back her shotgun in favor of a smaller tranquilizer gun that she pulled out from beneath her STREXCORP® jacket, and before Cecil so much as had time to decide whether he ought to attack or run for his life, she had fired a dart that hit him squarely in the center of his collarbone. He tried to pull the dart out as quickly as he possibly could, hoping that he could remove it fast enough to keep it from affecting him, but even as the dart fell from his numb fingers, he knew that it was useless. The world was already spinning, and even though he had no sensation of falling, he suddenly felt his head hit the ground. Something was shoved over his head and he could no longer see, and then he felt himself being lifted as easily as a toy by those sharp spider-limbs, felt his own limp useless tentacles dragging in the sand as he was carried toward whatever fate these monstrous strangers intended for him.

“Carlos,” Cecil choked out weakly before the leaden numbness of his limbs and the weighty spinning in his head overcame him. His last sensation before he lost consciousness was of being tossed, as roughly and carelessly as a sack of potatoes, into the backseat of a car. And then only blackness, as dark and deep and evil as the eyes of that monster who wore Cecil’s face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for being slow to update, friends. I've been super busy. But look, Kevin!


	10. Strex!

When Carlos had felt Cecil’s hand slip out of his own, knowing he would not find it again, he had felt himself, just for a moment, submit to the urge to succumb – to give up, and let the sand swallow him, ending the pain once and for all with a final blaze of gritty agony. But it was the drive for survival that won out, and he seized the torn piece of cloth still partially wound around his head and clamped it over his mouth and nose to keep the worst of the particulates from entering his airways. His knees buckled and he collapsed to the ground, partially because of how precious little energy he had left and partially because he knew he could better protect himself from the storm if he curled up and covered his vulnerable eyes, ears, mouth, and nose as much as he could. Turning himself away from the direction from which the wind seemed to be gusting most fiercely, Carlos curled in on himself like a turtle retreating into its shell, screwing his eyes shut and keeping the thin cloth clasped to his face. He was able to manage shallow breaths this way without too much sand getting into his orifices. He would just wait out the storm this way, he told himself, and once it was safe, he would find Cecil again and they would figure out what to do next. He only hoped that Cecil knew how best to protect himself from the storm in the meanwhile.

Even though he knew it was probably less than fifteen minutes, the storm seemed to last an eternity as Carlos lay curled on the ground, the wind screaming in his ears and the stinging sand buffeting his body. His consciousness went in and out as he struggled to get enough air between the parched dryness of his throat and the sand particles that still managed to penetrate his makeshift facemask. He was in the torpor of one such dizzy spell when the screaming winds began to die down, and it was not until he felt a hand on his shoulder that he was jolted back to consciousness.

“Cecil?” he tried to choke out, but his throat was too bone dry, too gritty with sand to form the word. As he lifted his head, he saw the form of a man kneeling before him, all dusty and beige with the sand that clung to his clothes, the cloth wrapped around his head and face and the goggles over his eyes rendering him impossible to identify. Before Carlos could try to say more, before he could ask who this was out in the middle of the desert, the man fished something out of the satchel at his hip, and then the metal lip of a canteen was pressed to Carlos’s mouth. Though the water was warm from the heat of the day, Carlos felt he might faint from the pure relief of the liquid entering his mouth, his throat. He gulped greedily as his masked rescuer tilted up the canteen.

Carlos drank the entire contents of the canteen, and he was still thirsty when the man pulled it away, empty, from his lips. He licked the last of the moisture from his dusty cracked lips, dreaming of more water, of gallons and gallons of it. Lost in the thought, it took him a long moment to register that there was not only one figure standing over him, but three, all clad the same way.

He coughed and finally asked the necessary question. “Who are you?”

The man still kneeling before him said, “We were about to ask you the same thing.”

Carlos thought about that. Who was he now, but a half-dead man lying in the desert? He had left all affiliation behind. “Carlos,” he said finally. “My name is Carlos.” There was not much more to say than that. After a brief pause, though, he amended, “Carlos the scientist.” He was not going to let all that had happened rob him of that part of his identity, at least.

“A scientist, huh?” said the man, and though Carlos could see nothing of his face, he could have sworn there was a smile in his voice. The man lifted his gloved hands and brushed some of the dust and sand off of himself, while the two figures behind him did the same. As the clinging particulates were brushed away, Carlos saw white beneath. All three of them, Carlos realized suddenly, were wearing lab coats. “You’re one of us, then.”

Carlos’s heart swelled with hope at the idea that he could find safety and purpose, perhaps temporarily or perhaps indefinitely, with these other scientists, little though he knew about them and where they had come from. But a stab of anxiety punctured his momentary perception of his good fortune. “Cecil,” he said, pulling himself up into a sitting position, too weak to get back on his feet but needing to get a better look around. “Where’s Cecil?”

“You had someone with you?” asked one of the other scientists, a woman, judging by the sound of her voice.

“Yes,” said Carlos, his heart sinking. “My friend, he… You haven’t seen anyone else?”

“No one but you,” affirmed the man. “But it’s only been a few minutes since the storm died down. Your friend could still be out here. What does this Cecil look like?”

“He has – black and white hair, and… tentacles. Six of them. On his back.”

The scientists exchanged glances. “Are you sure this was a friend?” said the man.

“ _Tentacles?”_ said the woman.

“That sounds like a corpse-eater,” said the third.

“He’s not, I mean, he is, but –” Carlos shook his head, trying to clear it. The fatigue and the dehydration were conspiring to make his mind cloudy and sluggish. “He is a corpse-eater. I was his handler. But not anymore. I… he… he’s my boyfriend,” he finally finished lamely. He imagined how Cecil’s face would light up to hear him say that, provided he knew what it meant. God, he hoped he was okay.

The scientists exchanged looks again, and although their expressions were impossible to gauge beneath their face coverings, Carlos knew they must all be thinking that he was insane.

“I know I sound crazy,” he hastened to add. “But it’s true. He’s a corpse-eater, but he’s also a person, a… a really lovely person. And I care about him a lot. I know you have no reason to help me, but you’ve already shown a lot of kindness, and if you could help me find him, I’d… I’d be in your debt.” As if he had any means to repay such a debt. _I will repay you in science_ , he thought, and snorted aloud at the idea, too exhausted to care that the fact that he was laughing at nothing was certainly not helping the case for his sanity in the eyes of his rescuers.

“We can look around a bit,” said the woman after exchanging another significant but unreadable look with her colleagues, “but we really can’t stay here long. It’s not safe for us, or for you. We’re not going to take you anywhere against your will, but if we leave you here, you’re as good as dead, and not just because you look close to starvation.”

“The sandstorms?” Carlos hazarded.

Another look, more hesitation. “We’re not just talking about weather, no,” said the man. “Let’s just say that you’re very lucky that _we_ found you, rather than… someone else.”

“No need to dance around it, Dave,” said the third scientist sharply. “You could’ve been picked up by StrexCorp goons, and I’d be willing to bet they already snatched up your corpse-eater boyfriend, if he’s alive.”

“StrexCorp?” Carlos parroted, lost. “What’s…?” Lacking the energy to form a complete question, he let the single querying word trail off, blinking helplessly at his rescuers.

“Don’t freak him out, Nils,” said the man apparently named Dave. “If he doesn’t know about StrexCorp yet, I envy his blissful ignorance. And as a scientist, I don’t envy ignorance very often.”

“We can’t stay out here. It’s getting dark,” said the woman. “I’m sorry, Carlos, but it’s not safe for us to look for your friend right now. If you want to come with us, you can. There’s room for you in our jeep and enough water and rations back at our lab to get you hydrated and fed. If, after you’re back on your feet, you want us to bring you back here, we can.”

The words _water_ and _rations_ and _lab_ were all music to Carlos’s ears, but the thought of leaving here without Cecil, without even knowing what might have happened to him or whether he was okay, was agonizing. _I’m sure he survived the sandstorm. And with those animal carcasses, there’s plenty for him to eat here. He should be fine for a day or so while I regain a little strength. Unless this – this StrexCorp got to him…_ He shook off the thought. It wasn’t exactly like he had a choice, and fearing the worst wasn’t going to help anything.

He looked at the scientists and nodded slowly. Two of them went to his sides to take hold of his arms and help him to his unsteady feet. He was patiently guided a few hundred meters away to the scientists’ parked jeep and helped into the backseat. Dave got into the driver’s seat, the one called Nils got into the passenger side, and the woman whose name Carlos didn’t know yet climbed into the backseat next to him. She took off her head coverings and goggles as Dave started up the jeep, allowing Carlos to see her face, the first person’s face besides Cecil’s that Carlos had seen in what felt like weeks. She had high cheekbones, very dark skin and short-cropped hair, and her earnest smile was warm and made Carlos feel, in spite of everything, like he was safe for once. “I’m Rachelle,” she said. “Even if it’s only for a little while, I want to officially welcome you to our team.”

And before Carlos knew it, the rumble of the jeep’s engine as it drove through the desert and the soft murmur of the scientists’ voices had lulled him into the deepest sleep he had experienced in a very long time.

 

When Cecil woke up, all he knew was that he was lying down, he was in a moving vehicle, and that something covering his head was obscuring his vision. He automatically tried to lift a hand to his head to remove whatever was over his face, which only served to alert him that his hands were bound together at the wrists by some coarse fiber, and his arms were further restricted by a rope around his middle that bound them to his sides. He tried to move his tentacles instead, one toward his head with the intention of removing the head covering, one toward his hands to pull off the binding at his wrists, but his tentacles, too, were bound – not by any rope, but by the fact that someone had apparently tied all six into a great thick tangled knot at his back, and when he tried to move them, they pulled tight against each other, and it _hurt._ He couldn’t pull them free of their knotted configuration without the help of his hands, which, of course, were bound. He whimpered in frustration and fear, kicking his legs futilely against the side door of the car he was trapped in.

“Stop squirming or you’ll get another dart,” said a woman’s voice from somewhere in front of him, in response to the sound of his feet kicking against the door. _Lauren_ , he remembered.

He extended his tongue to touch whatever was obscuring his face. It felt like rough fabric, burlap perhaps. He might not have access to his hands or tentacles, but he had his mouth. He maneuvered the fabric with his tongue until it was close enough to seize in his teeth, and then he started to move it toward the back of his mouth. When the material was saturated with saliva he swallowed, and repeated the action again and again, feeling the fabric hood slide up the back of his head, then over it, then down his face with each swallow until his eyes and nose were no longer covered. Gulping as quietly as he could to avoid attracting his captors’ attention with the sound, he finished swallowing down the burlap hood they had shoved over his head, and began to take in his surroundings.

Lauren was driving the car, but a dart gun was lying on the center console beside her, within her easy reach. It was pointed back toward Cecil so that she would merely need to reach down and pull the trigger to guarantee Cecil’s prolonged unconsciousness. The abomination called Kevin was in the passenger seat, half of his spider-like appendages sticking out the open window and the other half cramped down behind the console in the space between the front and back seat, uncomfortably close to Cecil’s body. Cecil was oriented toward the passenger side, which frustrated him; if he had been facing the other way, he thought, he would have lifted himself up enough to lunge over the back of the front seat and sink his teeth into Lauren’s throat. He did not think the same was possible with Kevin. The thought of biting him made Cecil nauseous, and he felt that all it would earn him would be another dart from Lauren or a stab through the heart by one of Kevin’s spear-sharp limbs, or possibly both.

He felt around the door with his foot, trying to find a handle. Perhaps he could get the door open with his feet and hurl himself out of the moving vehicle, he thought, though after a few moments’ consideration he dismissed the idea. It would be painful to fall out of the car, and once he was out, even if he could get to his feet, how far would he be able to run before he was felled by another dart or even a bullet? Or maybe Lauren wouldn’t even bother to shoot him and would simply turn the car around and run him over with it. And if he somehow miraculously did get away, what then? His arms and tentacles were tied; he was essentially helpless. He’d either be killed by a monster, or he’d die of starvation in the desert. He was trapped in this car, end of story.

He lifted his head as much as he could without fully righting himself, knowing that would doubtless attract his captors’ unwanted attention. He was able to peer out the side window, but it was a moonless night outside the car, and he could not see anything besides his own dim reflection in the glass. He almost did not recognize the reflection as his own at first, and reflexively froze for a half-second in the fear that he was somehow looking at Kevin once more, for at first glance, the eyes in his reflection looked black and hollow. After a moment, though, he understood: the march through the desert, the strain and the hunger, had been nearly as unkind to him as it had been to Carlos, and his face had become gaunt, his eyes sunken and shadowed.

He shifted a little, trying to reach a vantage point where he would be able to see out the windshield, hoping that the car’s headlights might shed some light, literal and figurative, on where he was being taken. But the desert he could see looked featureless and utterly unfamiliar, and what was worse, Lauren had spotted him moving in her rearview mirror.

“How on earth did he get that hood off?” she grumbled as her hand closed around the dart gun on the center console.

It seemed to Cecil that her finger had barely touched the trigger before he felt the pinch of the dart hitting him in the flank. Perhaps this dart was somehow more potent than the last, or perhaps there was some residual of the last tranquilizer still in his system, but he felt as though this one took effect even more rapidly than the last, the blackness descending on him like a thick curtain.

In the heavy slumber of his forced unconsciousness, it felt like hardly a minute had passed before he was jolted dizzily awake by the shocking feeling of a spray of very cold water dousing his body. It took a long few seconds for him to process the sudden flood of sensory information: he was on his hands and knees in a fluorescent-lit chamber of cold white tiles, he had been stripped naked, and – some small mercy – his hands had been untied and his tentacles untangled. He could not tell where the water was coming from, but it was very forceful, painful on his dry sunburnt skin. He watched as clear-thin strips of his skin, peeled off by the force of the spray, slithered across the floor in the wash of water toward a dark hole in the tiles that served as a drain, accompanied by larger black-purple flakes shed from his sun-tortured tentacles.

Suddenly aware of his own thirst, he turned his head to try to catch some of the harsh cold spray in his mouth, but as soon as it hit his tongue, he spat. The water, if that was what it was, tasted of chemicals, and left an acidic flavor in his mouth and nose. He tried to crawl away, to find some way out, but just then the spray stopped abruptly, and after a moment of silence a vent somewhere roared to life; he felt a wash of air evaporating the liquid from his skin, making him shiver.

When the air had died down, he heard a small, high-pitched hum of machinery, and when he lifted his eyes toward the sound, he found that a metal rod had extended from the wall. Clasped in the pincer-like forceps at its end was a small plastic cup, and inside was a white pill.

He was aware of what pills were, at least in the broadest sense. He had never been made to take one himself, but he had seen humans take them, and he knew that they were considered very valuable. _Medicine,_ he had heard them called. They were not food, but if you swallowed them, they did some good inside your body, somehow. He could certainly use all the good he could get in his body right now. He had never heard of a pill doing anything bad. And so, trustingly, he plucked the pill from the cup and tossed it down his throat.

The purgative, for a purgative it was, took effect within minutes. He barely had time to register a sudden unpleasant churning in his stomach before a hard retch wracked his entire body, sending a hot liquid surge of digested animal parts up his throat and spewing out across the wet tile floor. His body forced another retch before he even had time to take a breath, and his eyes were streaming as less thoroughly digested chunks of flesh sprayed out of his jaws and slapped meatily against the floor. Along with them came the burlap hood he’d swallowed in the car, soaked and torn and frayed from its brief stay in his stomach.

Physically, it was not as bad as vomiting up the corpse had been after the monster had emerged from the dark pool. Thanks to the strength of the purgative, it was fast, emptying his stomach in mere minutes rather than over the course of an entire night. And he had not been quite as full now as he had been then – enough time had passed since he’d fed on the dead animals, and his body had been so desperate for nourishment, that a good deal of what he’d eaten had been fully digested and absorbed. But aside from that, he knew that this was so, so much worse. Vomiting up a meal was never pleasant, but at least last time he’d been well-fed beforehand and had fully expected to have another meal within a day or two. Now, he was already undernourished, and with no idea what to expect in the immediate future in terms of feeding, starvation was a very real possibility. He’d needed every ounce of that meat, and now it was being forced out of his body and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

When the vomiting stopped, he wept as he watched what was left of his meal slowly disappear down the drain, feeling as though he was watching his own chances of survival diminish and disappear before his eyes.

When the last of it had drained away, a door Cecil hadn’t perceived, for it was made of white tile like the rest of the room, swung inward. Lauren stood behind it. She wasn’t holding a weapon that Cecil could see, but he didn’t doubt that she had one on her, and anyway he felt too weak and spent to fight. “On your feet,” she said, and he obeyed, naked, vulnerable, shivering.

Gesturing feebly to the white room, all he dared say was, “Why?” His voice was rough from the forceful vomiting, and it cracked a little, reminding him of the tears he’d shed. He wiped them from his gaunt cheeks with the back of his hand, telling himself _she doesn’t deserve to see how scared you are._

“Standard protocol. New acquisitions need to be cleaned – inside and out. Come on, follow me.”

Cecil didn’t like the sound of any of that, particularly being referred to as an _acquisition,_ but he didn’t dare question his captor further. Curling his tentacles protectively around his body, he followed Lauren as she turned away from the door and led him away from the white room, down a dimly-lit concrete hallway that may as well have been one of the featureless hallways of the base he’d grown up in.

Lauren stopped beside a doorway and gestured brusquely for Cecil to go in before her. Peering warily inside, Cecil found himself looking at a cell that was essentially no different from the one he’d inhabited at home: the walls were concrete, there were no windows, and the farthest part of the cell had been converted into a cage partitioned off from the rest of the room with metal bars. There was no exam table and no cot for a handler, but aside from that, it may as well have been a carbon copy. Visually, at least.

The smell was another story. From the moment he entered the cell, Cecil was confronted with the overpowering smell of blood, so strong and sharp in the air that he experienced a moment of cognitive dissonance as his eyes were telling him the room was _not_ utterly saturated with carnage while his nose was telling him it ought to be. As he took a few tentative steps into the cell, prodded on by a sharp kick to his calf by Lauren behind him, he noticed very faint ghosts of reddish stains on the walls. Someone must have scrubbed very hard indeed to come so close to eradicating all visual traces of whatever death had happened in this room, but they had not altogether succeeded. But for the smell to linger so persistently, that blood must have gone unscrubbed for quite some time… or perhaps blood had been spilled here so often that the scent had become permanent. He trembled, wondering if his own blood would soon be adding to the pale red discolorations in the concrete.

The cage door was opened for him and he was shunted inside. Lauren slammed the door shut behind him as he retreated to cower in the corner. She made for the door of the cell, but just before she left the room she turned back and said, “Were you alone in the desert?”

It took Cecil a moment to process the unexpected question, preoccupied as he was with the faintly bloodstained walls. “Was I… Yes – yes. I was alone.” Whatever nightmare he had gotten himself into here, there was no way he was going to risk getting Carlos dragged into it along with him. _Let him have survived, oh, please, let him somehow be safe._

She left.

Cecil did the only thing he could do, which was to curl up in the corner of the cage and hide as much of his body as he could in his tentacles. He was still terrified, but there was a certain comfort in being in a cage that came from being kept in cages all his life. Little though he liked being caged, when he was locked in a cage, there was nothing he could do but wait to be let out again, wait to be told what to do. There was a freedom in that.

Perhaps there was still some of the tranquilizer in his bloodstream, or perhaps it was simple exhaustion, but in spite of his fear, it was not long before he began to fall asleep. Curling up on a concrete floor under the shadow of cage bars was comforting in its familiarity; he had been falling asleep that way for most of his life. And though his mind’s eye flickered with troubled dreams and cruel black eyes, he slept through the rest of the night – though he would not have known when the sun rose in the unchanging fluorescent light of the cell. Sleep-deprived as he had been lately, his body craved rest almost as much as it craved nourishment.

Maybe he would have slept even longer if that craving for nourishment had not woken him with a painful hunger pang, his empty stomach demanding attention. The overwhelming smell of blood, frightening though it was in its implications, presently made his mouth water, and he couldn’t help but wonder whether all that blood might mean that there were now or soon would be corpses in this building that needed cleaning up. And whether he might be allowed to be the one to clean them up.

He wondered if Lauren would be back soon. He imagined somehow wresting her dart gun from her when she went to open the cage, shooting her with it, peeling off her khakis and that yellow jacket with its ugly emblem once she was unconscious. He imagined swallowing her, how easy it would be when her body was limp and unconscious, how little effort it would take to get all of her inside him where her flesh was needed. The thought of the taste of warm skin made the well of saliva already in his mouth overflow into drool that spilled over his lower lip. His stomach cramped agonizingly, making him arch his back and press a fist against his abdomen in an effort to palliate the pain, but it did not help much. The sharp ache of the hunger pang culminated in a long, needful growl from his stomach, and he rubbed it helplessly with the heel of his hand, knowing that there was nothing he could do to satisfy it, knowing that his fantasy of taking on Lauren would remain just that – a fantasy.

To distract himself, he thought of Carlos. He imagined Carlos somewhere safe, surrounded by as much water as he could drink and as much food as he could eat, protected from all the dangers of the desert, as if by focusing on that image he could somehow will it to be true. Unbidden, though, thoughts of Carlos suffocating in the sandstorm, thoughts of him cursing Cecil with his last breath for letting go of him when he had promised he wouldn’t, interrupted the wishful thinking.

“Stupid animal,” he cursed himself aloud, “you let go of him to keep your food down, and look how much good that did – you threw it all up anyway and now Carlos is probably _dead_ because of you. Stupid, selfish _animal!”_ The hunger wracked through him again, and this time he did nothing to try to alleviate the pain, because he deserved this, didn’t he? It would serve him right to starve, he thought, even as the thought made him whimper with dread. It was all his fault – his fault for letting go of Carlos in the sandstorm; his fault for eating Pamela Winchell and forcing them to flee into the desert; his fault for telling Carlos what he’d done to his last handler; his fault for _doing_ what he’d done to his last handler. That had been the start of it all, hadn’t it? If he had never killed his handler, Carlos would never have been reassigned to him, and he would be safe. _He would have been better off never knowing me._ He swallowed a sob, for he knew it was true, but he loved Carlos so damn much. The idea of never having known him hurt too much for words.

“Hurts _you_ too much,” he responded to the thought aloud. “Look how much you hurt _Carlos_. But you only care about your own pain, because you’re selfish. That’s all you’ve ever been, selfish, greedy, not thinking of anyone else. Carlos told you as much. He was right all along.” Taking a shuddering breath, he wiped away tears that had begun to flow down his cheeks. “If Lauren comes back, you won’t ask for food. You won’t beg. You’ll starve quietly because that’s what you deserve.” He said it with cold grim resolve, but he knew it would not be easy, perhaps not even possible. The hunger was incredibly intense, and he didn’t trust himself not to throw himself at Lauren’s feet and beg to be fed.

He tried to muster the will to avoid doing just that when he heard the door to the cell opening, but when he uncurled the tentacles he had wrapped around himself and raised his eyes, he saw that it was not Lauren entering the cell. No, it was far worse than that. The first thing he saw was a long, spindly spider-like limb pushing the door open, and there stood Kevin, as abominable to Cecil’s eyes as he had been before. Cecil felt incredibly vulnerable in the cage with this monster looking at him, and he pressed himself against the wall even more than he already had been, a low growl gathering in his throat.

“There’s no need to be so standoffish,” said Kevin in that chillingly saccharine voice that seemed to come from nowhere, for his terrible toothy seam of a mouth still did not move at all. “ _I’m_ not going to hurt you. Why would I?” The question did not seem as rhetorical as it ought to have, as though Kevin were legitimately trying to think of a reason to hurt Cecil, and if he thought of one, he just might.

Cecil reflexively put a hand to the shallow but still stinging wound on his shoulder where one of Kevin’s sharp black limbs had pierced his skin in the desert.

“Oh, that?” It was impossible to tell where Kevin’s pure black eyes, gleaming like two dead beetles in the hollows of his eye sockets, were looking, but evidently his gaze had followed Cecil’s hand. “You can’t blame me for _that_. You _were_ trying to choke me to death, weren’t you?” He said it perfectly cheerfully, as if asking after the weather rather than accusing Cecil of trying to murder him. “I’m going to have to call self-defense on that one.”

Cecil did not want to talk, did not want to engage with this creature as though it was worthy of conversing with. But something told him that ignoring Kevin was not going to make him go away, and might even make things considerably worse. So he forced himself to stop the growling, a reflex brought on by fear, and spoke: “How are you talking without moving your mouth?”

Kevin took several strides forward, only stopping when he was right in front of the cage bars. Cecil would have pressed himself further into the wall if he could have. Kevin being that near made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, and it took conscious effort not to start growling at him again. “We can’t all have mouthparts suited to speech,” said Kevin, and for just a fraction of a second his jagged teeth parted, and within the slimy cavity they hid, Cecil caught a glimpse of something so repugnant that he could only hope he would never have to see it again. “Luckily for me, the StrexCorp vocal synthesizer allows me to talk all I want.” He touched the thing that encircled his neck, which Cecil had taken for a collar. “StrexCorp makes everything better!”

“What is StrexCorp?”

“StrexCorp is only the best and biggest private company still operating today! StrexCorp caters to any and all market needs in these troubled times of ours. Weapons supply, technological innovation, strategic survival planning, and corpse cleanup services. Why rely on the government when you can get it better with Strex? We provide –”

He stopped suddenly, and his head tilted to the side at a somewhat unnatural angle. One of his eyes twitched and a muscle in his jaw worked. Then he shook his head. “Sorry about that, minor recalibration in my neural chip. Don’t worry, it hardly hurts at all once you get used to it. You’ll see once they implant yours. What was I saying?”

“Neural chip?” said Cecil, whose throat had gone dry the moment Kevin had said _once they implant yours._

“Yes, a neural chip, what a blessing it is to have one! You won’t have to stay in that cage anymore once you have yours. I bet that where you come from, you were never allowed to do anything or be anywhere without supervision. Well, the neural chip is going to change all that! And then you and I are going to be the best of friends. I can already tell.”

Cecil did not comment on that speculation, but he reflexively bared his teeth.

Kevin extended a hand through the cage bars, and Cecil noticed for the first time that he was holding something in his hand – a white plastic bottle with a black cap. “Here,” he said. “You must be hungry.”

“What is it?” said Cecil suspiciously, making no move to accept the bottle or even move closer to Kevin. He was certain that those black spider-like limbs could easily stab him through the bars if he got close enough.

“It’s a StrexMeal. Pure concentrated protein and nutrition in a convenient bottled form.” Evidently gleaning that Cecil was not going to move, he tossed the bottle to him.

Cecil caught it, took off the cap, and sniffed its milky off-white contents. After the incident with the pill, he was very wary of putting anything unrecognizable in his body. But if it really did contain nutrition, he could hardly pass it up. _You deserve to starve,_ he reminded himself, but god, his stomach hurt so badly… Grimacing, he took a tentative swallow of the liquid, which had a thick smooth texture but no flavor whatsoever. He took another swallow, then another, hoping for the best.

It only took a few minutes for his body to decide that it did not like this one bit, and he retched so hard that the white fluid came out his nose. Coughing and gagging, he threw the bottle away from him, spilling its tasteless contents across the floor. His stomach could handle most anything, from bone to fabric and had even taken care of glass and certain soft metals in the past, but evidently it could not handle whatever was in this vile synthetic cocktail.

“Oh dear,” said Kevin impassively. “That didn’t work out too well, did it? I guess we’ll have to find something else for you to eat.” And with that he turned and made to leave the cell.

“Wait!” Cecil called hoarsely after him. He certainly didn’t want to spend another moment in Kevin’s company, but he still had so many unanswered questions. “Why are you keeping me here? What’s a neural chip? _Why do you look like me?!”_

But Kevin had already left the cell and closed the door behind him.

He lay down flat on his back with a whimper, his tentacles curled up around him. And for the first time he noticed that there were faint bloodstains on the ceiling, too, as there were on the walls, but these seemed to be formed into words. He did not think that it would bring him any comfort, whatever it said, even if he had been able to read it. He closed his eyes.

_Believe in a Smiling God,_ said the writing in blood on the ceiling. _Strex!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm reeeeally sorry for being so slow to update this. I may be slow sometimes but I will not abandon this story. Thanks for your patience!~


	11. The Child

Sleep no longer seemed to be an option. Though as he lay on the cold floor Cecil still felt the deep exhaustion in his limbs, his back, behind his eyes, it was utterly overpowered by the incessant awareness of the painful hollowness that stretched from his mouth down to the depths of his guts. Hunger seemed to have an upward movement over time, he thought. It began in the belly with growls and pangs, unpleasant, but contained; but if left unsatisfied too long, it began to expand, creeping up the gullet, up and up until it was stuck in the back of his throat, something he couldn’t force down no matter how hard he swallowed. And then he would begin to feel it even in his mouth, that consuming emptiness, making him pant and slaver, making him suck his own fingers like a child just for the relief of having something between his jaws. He wondered if, given enough time, it could creep farther – outside his body, into his skin and nose and eyes, like a fever or an itch that would grow and spread until it drove him insane. Was that what it would be like, to starve?

It was that idea that consumed him as he gazed vacantly up at the faint writing on the ceiling, unsure whether minutes were passing or hours or even days in the unchanging fluorescent light of his windowless cement prison. He wondered suddenly how the bloodstains had gotten all the way up there. It was not a low ceiling. He could see how blood might be able to spatter that far in a particularly violent circumstance, but the writing? He would not even be able to touch the ceiling if he stretched a tentacle as far as it could reach, and his tentacles could reach considerably farther than his arms. A disturbing mental image occurred to him then: Kevin, his sharp black limbs scuttling up the sheer wall like the spider’s limbs they so resembled. Was it possible that Kevin was the one who had written something up there – that Kevin had been the occupant of this cage at some point in the past? He remembered then what Kevin had said when speaking of his neural chip: _You won’t have to stay in that cage anymore once you have yours._ He shuddered at the array of possible implications, none of them pleasant.

He was still thinking of Kevin when the door to the cell creaked open, and he immediately sat up and tensed in the expectation of meeting those black eyes again, but it was not Kevin who entered. It was Lauren, and she was not entirely alone. In her arms was the limp body of a child – a young girl, ten or eleven perhaps.

Lauren’s gaze swept over the discarded bottle and the puddle of spilled and vomited white liquid, which had coagulated into something with the consistency of soft plastic, on the floor of Cecil’s cage. “Since you can’t hold down a StrexMeal, we’re willing to provide you with alternative nourishment until long-term arrangements have been made. I’m going to open the cage now. Stay put, and you get the girl. Try anything, and I take you out with something that’s going to hurt a lot more than those darts did. Understand?”

Blinking in confusion, but unable to think of anything beyond the fact that he was apparently about to be fed, Cecil could only nod. Slinging the girl over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes so that she could free up one arm, Lauren opened the cage door, slung the girl down onto the floor, and then gave the body a kick so that it would roll closer to Cecil before she shut the door behind it. Without another word, she turned and left the cell, and Cecil was left in silence with the child’s body.

It had been a long time since he had eaten the corpse of someone so young, as children’s bodies were taken to feed young operatives before they ever went out on calls. Her shoulders felt very small in his hands as he pulled her closer to him. She was also very warm, which, coupled with the lack of rigor mortis, suggested that she could not have been dead very long at all. He was not sure what had killed her as she had no visible wounds, aside from some bruising, but as he dragged her body into the corner, he did notice that her legs were twisted at a slightly unnatural angle.

Her small size meant she was not going to be particularly filling, but at least she would go down quickly, he thought. He lifted her head to his mouth, his stomach growling incessantly in anticipation, and slid his jaws around it. The taste of the skin of her face on his tongue was heavenly, and perhaps it was because he paused for a split second to savor it that, just as he was about to ease the head into his eager throat with the first swallow, he felt a strange ticklish sensation against his tongue.

_She’s… breathing._

As the realization crossed his hunger-fogged mind, it took herculean effort not to succumb to the powerful urge to swallow immediately, to get the much-needed nourishment on its way to his stomach. His brain quickly began to play tricks on him, tried to tell him that he had imagined the feeling – and that even if what he felt _had_ been breath, she would not be breathing very much longer, if only he swallowed her down. He needed to eat, and she was food; whether or not she was alive was irrelevant.

But another part of him, struggling to retain lucidity in the increasingly visceral haze of his desire for human flesh, insisted that _she’s a child – helpless, and innocent. Killing her might prolong your life a little, keep starvation at bay, but you’d have no excuses not to call yourself a killer anymore. You’d be a real monster._ In his mind, the words took on Carlos’s voice.

 Physically trembling a little with the effort of resisting the overpowering instinct to feed, he wrapped his tentacles around the girl’s torso and pulled her back, sliding her head free from his jaws. With the back of his hand, he wiped off as much of his saliva as he could from the girl’s face, and he watched the subtle movement of her nostrils as he did so. It was unmistakable now – she was breathing, and beneath her silk-paper eyelids, he could see her eyes shifting, as though she was dreaming.

His thoughts turned to Lauren. Surely she must have known the child she was giving him was alive. His conviction of her evil, of Kevin’s evil, of the evil of this whole mysterious despicable entity of StrexCorp, deepened. He could feel hatred like something palpable in his veins – spreading, constricting, crystallizing. “I’ll sooner starve than let _them_ make me hurt you,” he told the unconscious girl now cradled in his tentacles, hoping that it was a promise he would have the fortitude to keep.

His stomach, which had been growling almost without pause since Lauren had placed the child in his cage, gave a louder rumble, and his guts cramped so painfully that it was almost nauseating. “Oh _gods,_ ” he whimpered, pressing a fist to his mouth to stifle a very thin, strained burp, which left an acid taste in his mouth. His stomach, teased by the expectation of a meal and the taste of human skin, must be going into overdrive in preparation to expeditiously digest the fresh meat. Meat that was not actually forthcoming, if Cecil was going to keep his promise. And he intended to.

The next few hours were not going to be pleasant.

He laid the girl down as gently as he could on the floor in one corner of the cage, then backed away from her to curl up in the opposite corner, as far away from her as he could possibly be within the confined space. His insides cramped and ached, pain and hunger blurring into one, each seeming to magnify the other, and every ragged in-draw of breath brought the scents of the unconscious girl and the blood that seemed to have been sucked up by every porous inch of this cell’s loathsome walls. Scents that tantalized him and perpetuated the constant drip of saliva from his parted, panting jaws as he shivered and writhed in dizzy, feverish, ravenous agony.

It felt as though it was every few minutes that he came dangerously close to giving in, to crawling across the cell and devouring the sleeping child. But every time he nearly succumbed, he heard Carlos’s voice in his head. _You’re so much more than this,_ Carlos had said in the desert, not long before they were separated, his hand on Cecil’s stomach, and Cecil clung to that thought now. _I’m more than this. I’m stronger than this. I don’t need to eat… I don’t need to kill. I can resist…_

“Resist, resist, _resist_ ,” he was murmuring frenetically under his breath, when suddenly he heard sounds of stirring from across the cage. He lifted his head enough to see that the girl had woken and was sitting up, her back against the cage bars, rubbing her eyes in apparent disorientation. And then she was looking at him, her large brown eyes contemplating him without evidence of fear or revulsion, but with a visible measure of suspicion.

“Are you the reason my hair’s wet?” she said, rather accusingly, twirling a strand of her still saliva-sticky hair around her forefinger.

“I…” Cecil didn’t know what to say; he didn’t think that telling her he had had her head in his mouth, and that he had very nearly swallowed it – along with the rest of her – would be particularly well-received, but in his present state, his mind was not offering any alternatives. So he said nothing.

The girl paused a moment, biting her lip, one eyebrow quirked. “I’m sorry. _Can_ you talk? I just assumed…”

“I can talk,” Cecil ground out through gritted teeth, biting back a groan of pain as hunger twisted his insides up in knots.

“Oh. Good. I do know what you are. I’ve seen you before. Well, not _you_ , I guess, but things just like you. Corpse-eaters. But I never heard one talk, so I wasn’t sure if you could.” She was silent for a few moments, and Cecil averted his eyes, curling his tentacles more fully around himself; there was something penetrating and pure about her gaze, at least in his present somewhat less-than-lucid state, and he found it difficult to look at her.

“I’m not stupid,” she said suddenly and sharply. “I know the fact that I’m locked in a cage with a corpse-eater doesn’t mean anything good for me. I guess the StrexCorp people just forgot to make me into a corpse before they put me in here, huh?” Cecil dared to look at her again, and saw that she had folded her arms over her chest and was still staring at him, almost authoritatively. “You can’t eat me. I’m alive,” she added, with all the unshakable conviction and faith in the established rules of the world that only a child can have.

“I’m not going to eat you,” Cecil said, wiping some of the drool from his lips. Though the hunger was still a barely tolerable constant, the exceptionally fierce pain and cramps brought on by his stomach’s response to being denied the meal it had expected had finally begun to die down. He sat up to better meet her gaze, though he kept his tentacles coiled around himself. “I don’t even want to be here.”

“Oh,” she said, and as fearless as she had seemed, Cecil could see some of the tension leaving her posture once he said he wasn’t going to eat her. “You mean they took you prisoner, too?”

“I guess so. I was taken here against my will. They took me away from someone I love very much…”

The brown eyes widened. “Really? That’s the same thing that they did to me. I know my mom and my step-dad must be really worried about me… Did they take you away from your family, too?”

Cecil hoped that the girl would keep talking. He found it distracting from the hunger. Though he presently found it difficult to force out more than a few clipped phrases at a time, he hoped it would be enough to sustain a conversation. “No, I don’t have a family.”

“You don’t _have_ a family? Well, you must’ve had a parent, a mom, a dad? At least when you were younger. Did they die?” 

“No. I mean, I don’t know. I didn’t have a mom, I had a trainer. But that was a long time ago. I don’t know what happened to her.”

“Oh,” the girl said quietly, processing this. “Um… who _did_ they take you away from, then?”

“Carlos. My Carlos… He’s a scientist. We’re in love.” _Well, I love him, and I’m pretty sure he loves me back, even if he still hasn’t said it. Even if he might never get the chance to say it, now…_

A look of surprise. “I’m confused. I didn’t know corpse-eaters could be scientists…”

“He’s not a corpse-eater. He’s a human, like you.”

“Oh,” said the girl again, though she still looked confused. He couldn’t blame her for that; his relationship with Carlos was confusing enough to _him_. He didn’t doubt it would be bewildering for an outsider, let alone one so young. “So Carlos is your boyfriend, who is a human scientist. But what’s _your_ name, anyway?”

“Cecil.”

“Cecil. Huh, that… suits you. Mine’s Janice, by the way.”

“Janice,” Cecil repeated quietly. _It’s good to know her name,_ he told himself. _She’s a person, with a name. Not food. Not… food._

“Yeah.” She was quiet for a moment, and though Cecil had averted his eyes again, he could feel her gaze on him. “Are you, um… okay, Cecil? I’ve never seen a corpse-eater this close up, but I never noticed one… shaking like that.”

A hunger pang wracked him then, and he jammed a fist into his abdomen just below his ribs, teeth gritted as he waited for it to subside. “I’m just very hungry,” he murmured, deciding there was no point lying to the girl about that.

“I was supposed to be dead, wasn’t I?” Janice said softly, with shrewd perception. “I was supposed to be dead, and you were supposed to eat me up. I’m sorry I’m not dead… that looks like it hurts a lot.”

“I’ll be all right. But Janice? If I start coming towards you and I look like I might hurt you, run to the other side of the cage or if you can’t get away, kick me as hard as you can, okay?”

She crossed her arms again, and frowned slightly. After a brief but noticeable pause she said, “Why would I do that?”

“Because if you don’t, I might eat you, even though you’re not dead. I’m not very good at controlling my appetite,” he admitted miserably. “And I’ve never been this hungry before.”

Another pause. Then, “Well, I’m not going to do either of those things. Not because I don’t believe you or because I don’t want to, but because… I’m not very good at controlling my legs.” She smiled, a sad sort of smile that held a touch too much irony for someone so young.

Cecil thought of the slightly odd twist of her legs that he had noticed when he had thought her dead, and looking at her legs now, stretched out in front of her and completely still, he realized that they were thin with disuse beneath her faded, size-too-big hand-me-down jeans. “Oh,” he said – apparently it was his turn to be confused, processing. He was aware of the existence of such disabilities; it was just that he had been taught that children born with such extreme afflictions as the inability to walk practically never survived past infancy in the exacting conditions of the desert. This only strengthened his growing feeling that there was something exceptional about Janice. “You’ll have to punch me then, I guess.”

“I guess,” she said, “but I’d rather not have to. How about you just don’t try to eat me?”

“I’ll do my best not to. If Lauren comes back…”

“Lauren Mallard? I hate her,” said Janice darkly. “If I had a gun, or anything really, I’d kill her. Then you could eat her dead body.”

“I hate her, too. I’d like that.”

“What’s it like, to eat dead people?” Janice asked abruptly, with the cheerfully unchecked morbid curiosity unique to children. “Does human meat taste different from other meat? Does it hurt to have a whole body stuffed inside your tummy?”

“Er,” said Cecil, taken aback by the onslaught of questions, “I’d rather not talk about any of that right now. I don’t think it’s such a good idea to talk about eating, or think about eating, when I’m this hungry and you’re, well, where you are.”

“Ah. Right. I understand.” She tilted her head contemplatively. “When food is scarce at home, my step-dad – Steve – he always tells me to describe all my favorite foods I wish I was eating right then, and then to imagine and pretend like I’m eating them, only they’re invisible. He likes his invisible pie the best. It’s funny sometimes… mostly though it just makes me hungrier. So I know what you’re talking about.”

Cecil considered this bizarre anecdote for a moment, deciding that this Steve person sounded quite stupid to make up something as pointless as that. “Well, anyway, if Lauren comes back, I’ll try to convince her to get you out of this cage, all right?”

“No,” said Janice with surprising firmness, “Don’t do that. Anywhere she would take me could only be worse. You might eat me, but at least you don’t _want_ to do it, and you’re nice. You’re the first _actually_ nice person I’ve met in this place, in spite of all their big creepy smiles.”

In spite of everything, Cecil felt something warm bloom in his chest at Janice’s words – principally at the fact that she had referred to him as a _person_ , rather than a corpse-eater. “Are you sure?”

“One hundred percent. If I have to die in this place, I’d rather get killed by you than any of these evil jerks. Though of course, if I have a choice, I’d rather not die at all, so, you know… keep doing your best with the not eating me thing.”

“I definitely will.”

She was smiling at him. A small but genuine smile, like she actually considered him a friend, an ally within their shared prison. “Thanks. So… since we have nothing to do but pass the time, do you want to play a game?”

He cocked his head to the side. No one had ever asked him that before. “Yes. I want to play.” Then he added, almost anxiously, “But I don’t know the rules.”

Janice laughed – real, sweet, innocent laughter, something Cecil would never have expected to hear in the confines of this barren cell perfumed with blood. “I haven’t even said what game yet. How do you know you don’t know the rules?”

“Because I don’t know any games,” Cecil admitted. “I’ve only heard about them. I’ve never had anyone want to play one with me.”

“Wow,” Janice said, without judgment, just gentle incredulity. “Well, let’s start with a really simple one. It’s called the animal guessing game. You haven’t heard of it? Here’s how it works: you think of an animal. Let’s say, for example, it was a sand-borer. But you don’t tell me what it is! I have to ask you questions about it. Like I’d say, ‘Does it live underground?’ or, ‘Is it dangerous?’ and you’d say, ‘Yes,’ but if I asked something like, ‘Can it fly?’ then you’d say ‘No.’ Just _yes_ and _no_ answers, no extra details. And then, if I think I have enough information, I guess what animal it is you’re thinking of. If I say the wrong animal, the game keeps going. But if I say ‘Is it a sand-borer?’ then I win, and then I think of an animal and you ask questions. It keeps going like that. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” said Cecil, who wasn’t sure that he did, because this was a lot to process when he could barely think of anything besides how much his stomach hurt and how tasty Janice looked. The distraction was good, though, and it was helping. “Maybe we could practice it first, in case I make a mistake.”

“Okay, if you want to.” She laughed a little, again, almost as though she found his anxiety about mastering her simple game endearing. “You think of an animal first, okay? It can be any animal. Let me know when you’ve got it.”

“Um. Hmm. Okay. I think I’ve got one. Now you ask me a question, right?”

“Right.” She smiled again, her lips parting wide enough to show her teeth. There was a small gap where one of her baby teeth was missing, and a few of the other teeth were slightly, charmingly crooked, still settling into their permanent places.

_I will never hurt this girl,_ thought Cecil then, with a conviction that was surprising even to him. _Never._

“I’ve got my first question,” she said, her grin turning slightly impish. “Your animal, does it have… tentacles?”

 

Waking up was a gradual process for Carlos. It took several attempts. The first few times he opened his eyes, he could not even muster the energy to process what he was looking at or register any sensory information at all, really, before his eyes rolled closed again and he dropped back into oblivion. The third time this happened, he was able to lift his head, but as soon as he did that, a wave of dizziness came over him that was so strong that he was unconscious again almost instantaneously. The fifth time he woke, he was able to keep his eyes open long enough to register that someone was sitting beside him where he lay, looking down at him, proffering a canteen. He looked up at the dark, kind face – the name _Rachelle_ swam vaguely to the fore of his mind – as he thirstily slurped the water. When the water was gone, Rachelle disappeared, and Carlos fell asleep again.

After what felt like a long time, he woke again, and this time, it took. He felt groggy and disoriented, but somehow restored too, as though his body had busily been repairing some of the damage he’d done to it with the march through the desert while he slept. Slowly, his back feeling stiff as a wooden board, he sat up, pushing off a thin patchwork coverlet that had been draped over him. As he did so, he realized that someone had stripped him down to his boxers, and some kind of sticky astringent had been slathered onto the places where the blowing sand had left abrasions on his skin. His lips, which had been so painfully parched and cracked, felt remarkably better, too; he lifted a finger to touch them and found the flaking skin softened and soothed and slightly oily, as though someone had gently applied vaseline to it. He had no idea how long he had been asleep, or even where he was, but it seemed evident that while he slept, someone had been taking very good care of him.

He stood slowly, not trusting his own legs not to give way beneath him, and was somewhat taken aback by how steady they felt, comparatively. The rest really must have done him some good. As he stood there, he finally began to properly take in his surroundings: he was in a concrete chamber, but it felt far more like a proper room than the cells he was accustomed to. For one thing, it was smaller, and had one wall that joined a slanted portion of the ceiling, creating a cozy, nook-like space which contained the cot from which Carlos had just risen. For another, unlike walls of most rooms Carlos had been in in recent memory, these walls were not only bare, featureless concrete – they were… decorated. Pixelated photocopies of ancient, long-dead musical bands and film stars’ faces, only a few of whom Carlos recognized vaguely by name from folk stories of the past, served as makeshift posters. A photograph was tacked up in a prominent place near the bed, featuring a number of smiling people in lab coats. Carlos recognized Rachelle; he supposed two of the others might be his other two rescuers, Dave and Nils, whose faces he still had yet to see. Yellow desert sunlight was streaming into the room in a concentrated shaft, evidence of the fact that this room actually had a window, something Carlos hadn’t seen, he had to admit, since he had started working for the government. Squinting at the small reinforced pane of glass, he noticed that someone had drawn out a calendar on it with a red china marker, crossing off days. It did not look like any calendar he was familiar with; he had never heard of any unit of time called _September._ Underneath the calendar was the word _science_ in a fancy cursive, with a few scribbled hearts around it, and that brought a small smile to Carlos’s face.

Carlos started, suddenly noticing what at first appeared to be another man standing directly across the room from him. He quickly realized, however, that what he was seeing was his own reflection in a full-length mirror propped up against the wall. Whoever typically occupied this room had taken the china marker to the surface of the mirror, as well, and had deposited there a number of seemingly disconnected variable equations, some of them fragmented like half-formed thoughts. Carlos thought that if he spoke to the inhabitant of this room, he might recommend a notebook.

Looking back at the cot behind him, he noticed that, at the foot of the cot, on top of the coverlet, someone had laid out clothes. They were not the ones he had been wearing – he doubted they would ever be suitable to wear again, dirty and sweaty and smelly and thoroughly caked with sand as they must be – but fresh, clean garments. He put on the clean underwear, the khakis, and the t-shirt, and was delighted to find a clean white lab coat folded there as well. He felt as though he was returning to himself as he shrugged it on.

The clothes were too big by a considerable margin. Carlos was not sure if they merely belonged to someone with a larger frame, or if they would normally fit him well and he was swimming in them because he had lost so much weight struggling to survive in the desert. The latter seemed likely, he thought, as he ghosted his palm underneath the t-shirt and felt the severe concavity of his abdomen, the startling, protruding prominence of his ribcage. As if his touch had woken it, his stomach chose that moment to growl, and he realized that he was excruciatingly hungry. He took that as a good sign – for what felt like a long time now, he had been too dehydrated to feel anything but thirst and exhaustion, canceling out any hunger. He had not even felt hungry when he had eaten the raw meat from the animal carcasses, though he had forced himself to eat anyway, knowing his body had needed some, any, sustenance. If he was able to feel his hunger now, it must mean he truly had recovered some strength.

Remembering his rescuers saying something about rations, he licked his lips. He felt ready and eager to wolf down just about anything – beans, soup, yams, whatever canned goods they might have. _Anything_ , he thought, _but raw meat._ The memory of the chewy, gristly chunks of flesh he had forced himself to gnaw and swallow, of the feeling of sticky blood coating the back of his throat, was almost enough to make him gag.

He supposed the first step toward getting his hands on some much-needed food would be to find someone. He found his boots by the door and slipped them on before heading outside of the safe haven of the room he’d woken in. He found himself at the end of a fluorescent-lit hallway, short and low-ceilinged compared to what he was used to; a handful of other doors lined it, and some of them were half-open, revealing rooms not dissimilar to the one he had come from. He could see that the hallway opened up into a larger space, and he could hear voices coming from that direction. And so, trying to tamp down feelings of nervousness and distrust – _they’re scientists, they rescued you, why would they hurt you now? –_ he headed in that direction.

When he reached the larger chamber at the end of the hallway, his eyes grew wide in wonder. The room was as low-ceilinged as the hallway had been, but it was flooded with natural light, windows significantly larger than any of the porthole-sized openings Carlos might have expected lining all three walls. But even more amazing was the contents of the room: one half was occupied by industrial steel tables atop which sat a tantalizing array of beakers, flasks, Bunsen burners, and other scientific paraphernalia, while the other half was home to not one, not two, but _three_ beautiful, humming, functioning computers, plugged into a large generator solely dedicated to them. Carlos felt as though he might faint, looking at all that gorgeous equipment, and he found himself actually reaching for the wall to lean on for support.

“Welcome back to the world of the living,” said a man’s voice near him, and Carlos realized that two people were standing by the stainless steel tables. One of them was Rachelle, and the voice he recognized as Dave’s – a voice which he could now connect to a tall, ruddy-faced man with a large nose, receding dark gray hair, and twinkling blue eyes. He looked older, maybe in his fifties, but vigorous, rather considerable forearms crossed over his chest. “You’ve been asleep for almost forty-eight hours,” he added, by way of explanation.

Carlos cleared his sleep-gummed throat. “I _have?_ ”

“Yep,” chimed in Rachelle. “You’ve been hogging my bed for two days, mister! I’ve had to sleep on the emergency camp bed, and let me tell you, it hasn’t been kind to my back.”

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” said Carlos with extreme earnestness, despite how playful her tone had been. He felt horrible to think that he had robbed her of her rest, when she was the one who had rescued him from certain death. “You should have put me on that, you didn’t have to give up your own bed…”

“I told you the kid would feel bad,” said Dave with a grin.

Carlos, who had not been called a _kid_ in what had to be about fifteen years, must have looked bewildered by this remark, because Rachelle quickly said, “Don’t take it personal, Carlos, everyone’s a kid to Dave.”

Dave turned on Rachelle. “Are you calling me old?” he demanded with mock resentment. Rachelle just punched him in the shoulder.

Carlos could not remember the last time he had seen two people interacting in such a relaxed, playful, and downright friendly way. He was not sure how to react, though it stirred something in him deep down, so deep that it took him a moment to even understand what it was: a desire to be part of it. To have colleagues who were more than superiors and subordinates, who talked about more than protocol and deadlines – fellow scientists who were also friends. The kind of thing he had dreamed of as a kid.

“All this equipment,” he said, gesturing feebly at the room before him, encompassing all of the scientific gear as well as, privately, the people, “All this, it’s… incredible.”

“You’re a scientist, right? I’m sure you’ve seen all this stuff before.” Dave waved a hand dismissively, though he was still grinning.

“Yes, but… I mean, where I work – used to work – we only had one computer, and it was barely functional half the time, and…”

“Speaking of that,” said Rachelle, cutting across Carlos’s trailing words, “Where _did_ you used to work?”

“World government. The Vale branch.”

“Jeezus, I always figured the government was lying about their resources,” Dave huffed, “but I’d’ve never imagined, _one_ computer? They really must have spent themselves broke on those bio-engineering experiments.” 

“Yeah, well, corpse cleanup has been their most heavily funded program for years…”

“Maybe it wouldn’t have to be if they had invested more in civilian protection. Maybe then there wouldn’t be so many corpses to clean up all the damn time. What about _that?_ ”

“Dave, it’s not like Carlos has been making the government’s funding decisions for the past half century. There’s no need to interrogate him,” Rachelle said, giving Carlos an apologetic look. As Dave waved her off she added, “I apologize on his behalf. It’s past lunchtime, and he gets really grumpy when he’s hungry.”

“Right,” said Carlos. “I understand. Don’t worry about it. But, er, speaking of being hungry…” His stomach grumbled audibly, and he rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment.

“Oh, of course! I can’t believe I didn’t think of that right away, you must be starving,” she said sympathetically. “I’ll be right back with something for lunch.”

As Rachelle disappeared past Carlos down the hallway, Carlos approached the table and took a seat on one of the stools, across from Dave. “I agree with you about the government,” Carlos admitted. “Frankly, I’m not too fond of them in general right now. They actually tried to have me killed. That’s why I was out in the desert, where you found me.”

Dave’s bright blue eyes locked onto Carlos at that, clearly intrigued. “Tried to have you _killed?_ For what, exactly?”

“For being too nosy, apparently. For following proper experiment methodology. For actually trying to get accurate data. In short, for being a good scientist,” he said, unable to resist a snort at the ridiculousness of it all. “I was costing management too much money, it seems.”

“Sounds like a reason for them to fire you, if anything. But _kill_ you? Damn, kid, the times we live in. How did they try to do it?” Dave leaned forward across the table, clearly enjoying the conspiratorial intrigue. Carlos wished he could find it as interesting; it merely made him tired, to think about it.

“They ordered my operative to eat me alive.”

“Shit. Holy _shit_ ,” Dave said, shaking his head slowly. “How’d you get out of that one?”

“I probably wouldn’t have, if Cecil hadn’t decided not to obey.” He decided he ought to leave out the part about Cecil swallowing Pamela Winchell alive instead. “We escaped together.”

“Cecil – that’s the one you were looking for, when we found you, right? The corpse-eater.” After Carlos nodded in confirmation, Dave went on: “Now that you’ve rested and got some water in your system, tell me honestly, kid – did you actually mean to call a corpse-eater your boyfriend, or were you just loopy as all hell?”

For a brief moment, Carlos wondered whether he should lie. He wanted these scientists to like him, to respect him, and as long as he maintained that Cecil was his boyfriend, they were going to see him as at least somewhat crazy. But the urge to lie evaporated almost as quickly as it had arrived, and he said firmly, “I meant it.”

Dave leaned back, shaking his head. “Crazy times we live in.” Carlos hoped he would leave it at that.

Just then, Rachelle returned with a bowl full of what looked and smelled like a hearty vegetable stew, and Carlos thought he might faint from how delicious it smelled. As she sat down at the table with them, she produced three spoons and handed them out.

Carlos was desperate to be polite, but he couldn’t help it: he ate like a starving man, which was, he supposed, more or less what he was. He slurped up spoonful after heavenly spoonful of soft vegetable mush, and never in his life had he so appreciated that canned-goods taste.

He was still deeply involved with the soup when he realized that Dave was talking again, and that the subject of his relationship with Cecil was not as dropped as he had presumed. “Rachelle, did you know Carlos here was serious about what he said in the desert? He has a corpse-eater for a boyfriend.”

“I never assumed he wasn’t serious,” said Rachelle dismissively, though Carlos thought he detected something in her tone that suggested she would have hoped that he wasn’t.

“When you kiss a corpse-eater, does it taste like dead people?”

“Dave!” Rachelle hissed.

“What? I’m just curious. I’m a scientist, it’s in my nature.”

Carlos chose not to engage with the conversation, and to continue engaging with the soup instead, hoping the subject would blow over without him having to say anything about it.

“You can ask him questions when he’s not eating for the first time in who-knows-how-long.”

“You know what I want to know is, if the government only intended corpse-eaters to eat _corpses_ , why is it that they’ve got such sharp teeth? You don’t need sharp teeth to swallow a dead person, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Dave, I will punch you in the face if you say one more thing about corpse-eaters while we’re eating.”

Thankfully, that seemed to be the end of it, and Carlos was able to focus solely on soup until there was no more left in the bowl and he was licking the last vestiges from his spoon. When he had put it down, he thanked his rescuers sincerely for the meal, and then decided it was the appropriate time to ask: “Would it be possible to go out looking for Cecil soon?”

Rachelle and Dave exchanged a significant, troubled look.

“What is it?” Carlos said, a knot clenching in his recently-filled stomach.

“Well… you’re not going to want to hear this, Carlos, but while you were sleeping, we picked up one of StrexCorp’s radio frequencies, and… the long and the short of it is that we’ve confirmed that StrexCorp has your friend,” Rachelle said, and the way that she said it made it sound for all the world as though she was telling Carlos that Cecil was already dead.

“I don’t understand. I still don’t know what StrexCorp is. Why is it so bad if they’ve got Cecil? What will they do to him?”

“You don’t want to know,” Dave said darkly.

“Yes, I do. And then I want to figure out how to stop that from happening. I want to get him out of there, and back with me, where he belongs.”

“You can’t, Carlos,” said Rachelle, biting her lip, still trying to be gentle. “You’ll get yourself killed if you try, or worse. You’ve got to accept that he’s gone. No one who’s ever taken by StrexCorp gets out alive.”

“He will,” Carlos said, with quiet but implacable resolve. “I’ll make sure of that. Now… tell me what I need to know.”  


	12. The Hiding Place

Their game could not have lasted more than an hour before Cecil could no longer muster the focus to play. He had been enjoying it, he really had – Janice was very good at it and usually guessed his animals in only a few questions, while it took him dozens of questions to deduce her esoteric choices – but there came a point when the hunger pangs were so fierce that he was seeing white, and he had to shakily excuse himself and tell Janice he could not play anymore. She was sympathetic, and asked if there was anything she could do to make him feel better.

He knew there was only one thing she could do to make him feel better, and it was the one thing he could not ask of her. The thing that would cost her life. So he said there was nothing, but thanked her for being so kind and concerned for him, a perfect stranger who wasn’t even human.

She asked if it would help if she kept talking, and he said he’d rather she didn’t. It was true that talking had been a good distraction for a while, but it had reached a point now where every word she uttered merely served as a reminder that she was there, within reach, warm, helpless… edible. He didn’t tell her that. Instead he told her that it was because he was developing a splitting headache, which was true anyway. She was silent after that, and Cecil curled up in a ball with his tentacles coiled around himself. He tried his best to forget that she was there as his stomach reminded him, via vicious stabbing pain rippling through his guts every few seconds, that it was very much empty and very much displeased about being so.

He was not sure how much time passed, as every minute dragged into an eternity with the rending ache of his starving body, but it was a female voice that eventually broke the silence. Not Janice’s voice, but an adult voice, a falsely honeyed voice with a sharpness beneath it like the hidden edge of a razorblade. _Lauren._

“The girl is still here.” She sounded puzzled by this fact. Cecil lifted his head reluctantly to see her standing outside the cage, holding some folded yellow clothes and staring at Janice with a look of complete bewilderment. “I would have thought you’d have downed her in five minutes flat. You _did_ understand that when I said _you get the girl_ , it meant she was for eating, didn’t you?” Clearly she thought it more likely that he was simply incredibly stupid than that he was restraining himself from killing the girl for moral reasons.

“I understood,” he ground out, glaring at her with absolute hatred, wishing that she was the one inside this cage with him and Janice was the one safely outside it. Thinking about what he’d do to her if that was the case.

Lauren pursed her lips, looking at him with inscrutable eyes. “When snakes are kept in captivity, when they’re given prey, sometimes they don’t seem interested in it. Some mice even start to feel comfortable around the snake, believing it’s not a threat. I guess you’re just one of those snakes that lets the mouse sleep on its head for a few days,” she said, and her gaze suddenly shifted to meet Janice’s instead of Cecil’s. “But the snake _always_ eats the mouse eventually. Instinct is a powerful thing, you see.”

Janice stuck her tongue out at Lauren.

Lauren chose to ignore this gesture of defiance and returned her attention to Cecil. “Put these on,” she commanded, pushing the yellow garments through the space between the cage bars.

Cecil pulled the garments toward himself with a tentacle, and upon closer examination saw that it was StrexCorp gear identical to that which Kevin wore. His upper lip curled in distaste, but he knew he would be a little warmer and feel a little less vulnerable if he had some clothes on. He could not afford to be picky about what those clothes were. So he did not argue with Lauren’s command and began to don the garments, slipping the shirt over his head and working his tentacles out through the gap in the back designated for them, then sliding on the pants.

Lauren nodded her approval as Cecil finished putting on the StrexCorp gear, and then she turned to leave again. But before she had left the cell, she turned, a small but rather nasty smile on her face, and said, “You should think about eating your mouse. If she’s still there in an hour, I’m going to let Kevin have her instead.” Then she left.

_Oh, gods._ What was he supposed to do now? There was no way he was going to let Janice fall into Kevin’s spidery grasp. He thought of what he had glimpsed behind the seam of Kevin’s teeth and shuddered. Surely that would be a worse fate than any he could offer her. _Snap her neck,_ whispered a small voice at the back of his mind. _It would be quick and almost painless. Then…_ He swallowed thickly, feeling the growl in his stomach just as much as hearing it, like the low hum of gathering thunder. He felt as though he was hurtling helplessly toward something inevitable, and that if he killed Janice it was going to change him irrevocably in unforeseeable but surely unpleasant ways.

“Cecil?”

He snapped to attention at the sudden sound of Janice’s voice. The moment he met her eyes, he felt undeniably evil for what he had just been thinking. “What are we going to do?” she said quietly, and with that innocent question banished any thought of letting himself harm her.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, “but if Kevin tries to touch you, I’ll kill him.”

“Who is Kevin?” she asked, her eyes cast down, chewing on her lower lip.

“A monster,” Cecil said simply.

“Like you?” There was no malice in Janice’s voice, but still, that stung a little. He’d allowed himself to think that she saw him as an equal. Monsters were not equals.

“Much worse than me.”

“Oh.” Janice raised her eyes, looking at him. He could see the doubt in her eyes. _She doesn’t think I can protect her,_ he realized with a clenching sensation in his chest. He couldn’t blame her for that. He must look utterly pathetic, thin and wasted by hunger, hunched and shivering, drooling like a rabid thing. _She’s right, I probably can’t. But I’ll die trying if I have to._

“Janice?”

“Yeah, Cecil?”

“Do you know any other games?”

She smiled tremulously. He could tell that she was scared, but that he had made the right choice by trying to distract her from the impending danger. “Yeah, ’course I do. Have you ever played twenty questions?”

He had not. She explained how it worked and they played for a while, Cecil doing his best to keep up with Janice in spite of the pain he was in, doing his best to try to laugh when she laughed and smile when she smiled.

But after a while she did not smile anymore, and she kept looking over her shoulder at the door to the cell. “I think it’s been almost an hour,” she said quietly, fidgeting nervously with her hands.

“Probably. Don’t think about it.”

“Maybe I should hide.”

Cecil frowned, puzzled. He glanced around the barren concrete floor of the cage that surrounded them. “There’s… not really anywhere to hide, Janice.”

Janice bit her lip. “If you tucked me up under your shirt, it could look like I was in your belly. Maybe we could trick them into thinking you ate me up like they wanted.”

Taken aback, Cecil considered this. Considering how limited their options were, it was not a terrible idea. He did not much like how close to each other it would require them being, afraid of the temptation that might come with such proximity, temptation that might result in her actually ending up in his stomach rather than feigning to be. But if it could trick Lauren or Kevin into thinking Janice was dead, it could very well buy her a few more hours of safety at least, without necessitating a possibly deadly fight between Cecil and Kevin. “It’s worth a try,” he decided after a few minutes’ thought.

Janice nodded and began to move toward him. It was clear that she was quite skilled at moving using only her arms and core strength, dragging her legs behind her, but Cecil hastened to meet her in the middle of the cage rather than making her come all the way to him. He leaned over her, raising all of his tentacles to obscure her from the view of any potentially hidden surveillance cameras, lowering his head to make it look as though he could actually be devouring her. While she was thus concealed, he used his arms to lift her up and slip her beneath the yellow fabric of the stretchy StrexCorp gear, tucking her close against the skin of his abdomen. She curled up there, and he helped tuck up her legs so that she was in a tight fetal position. When she was well situated, he pulled the fabric over and under her so that she was fully concealed.

After a few moments he leaned back and lowered his tentacles, tilting his head back and feigning swallowing to appear to be gulping the last of his meal for the cameras’ benefit. He smoothed a hand over Janice’s form beneath his shirt. It did not look one hundred percent convincing, he thought – the shape of her was slightly too defined to look like it was actually inside him, but at a distance, it would do.

“Can you breathe okay?” he asked. He could faintly feel the flutter of her heartbeat against his skin. It felt extremely odd.

“Uh-huh. Your tummy’s growling really loud… I can feel how rumbly it is.”

“Sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. I’m sorry you’re so hungry. Thanks for not actually eating me.”

“Of course.” He shifted, tucking one arm under Janice to make sure she wasn’t jostled and wouldn’t fall out from beneath his shirt, and laid down on his side, facing away from the cell door. He figured it would be best to feign sleep; if one of their captors came in, he hoped they would simply see that Janice was apparently gone, glimpse the bulge beneath his shirt, assume he was sleeping off his meal, and leave without asking any questions.

Cecil felt that it was only seconds after he had settled down into his feigned sleep position when he heard the door to the cell open. He felt his heartbeat speed up, but he willed himself not to move, not to look over his shoulder to see who had entered. He shut his eyes tightly, listening hard, hoping to hear the sound of the cell door closing again as whoever had come to check on him saw that Janice was gone and retreated. But he did not hear the cell door closing, and after a few moments of taut silence, he heard Kevin’s horrible, perpetually cheerful voice: “Oh, did you eat up that little treat after all?”

Cecil could hear his own heartbeat hammering in his ears, and it took all his concentration to keep his eyes closed and stay motionless. He could feel that Janice, hearing the unfamiliar voice, had begun to tremble a little, and he pressed his arm more securely around her form in an effort to reassure her.

There was a quiet clicking sound of something hard tapping against the metal bars of the cage, and though his eyes were closed and he dared not look, in his mind’s eye Cecil saw Kevin’s terrible black limbs sweeping back and forth across the door of the cage like grotesque questing fingers. “I know you’re not really asleep. I can tell. It’s sort of a talent of mine, you could say. So turn around and have a nice chat with me, won’t you? It would be _rude_ not to.” Something dangerous had crept into the chillingly sweet voice with those words, and a shiver ran down Cecil’s spine.

Perhaps Kevin was bluffing about being able to tell whether he was awake or not, but Cecil didn’t want to risk angering him. Gritting his teeth, he opened his eyes and sat up slowly, turning only half-way toward Kevin and keeping as much of Janice’s form hidden as he could with his tentacles and his protectively draped arm. He didn’t dare meet Kevin’s empty beetle-black eyes. He stared at a spot on the floor instead.

“That’s better,” said Kevin approvingly. He knelt in front of the cage door, so that he was at eye level with Cecil. “I’ll admit it, I’m a little disappointed… If you hadn’t eaten her, I had permission to take her myself, you see. But clearly you needed her more than I. I’m perfectly satisfied with a nutritious StrexMeal.” About two or three seconds elapsed before Kevin repeated, as if he had not convinced himself the first time he said it, “I’m perfectly satisfied with a nutritious StrexMeal.”

Cecil said nothing. _Go away, go away, go away, you disgusting freak._

Kevin went on, unperturbed by Cecil’s surly silence and refusal to meet his eyes. “It’s fascinating to see the aftermath, though. It’s very _clean_ , the way you eat, isn’t it? No blood, no mess, all gone. Very practical in that way.”

Kevin was silent for such a long moment that Cecil looked up almost instinctively. He instantly regretted doing so as the sight of Kevin’s face, frozen into a terrifying mockery of his own, filled him with the same flood of loathing and fear he had felt every other time he had seen it. Though Cecil looked down again almost immediately, the brief eye contact seemed to have prompted Kevin to continue speaking. “That was always the problem they had with me, when they tried to have me do the same job you do. You’ve made a horrible mess, Kevin, they’d say! Clean it up! And I sucked up every last drop of blood left over, but it was never good enough. They punished me, but I couldn’t help it. It’s how I was made. You’re very lucky you were made the right way for the job you were made to do.”

Cecil couldn’t help it; his eyes drifted to the old bloodstains on the walls, wondering if some of the horrible messes Kevin spoke of had been made in this cell. Kevin, it seemed, did not fail to notice what he was looking at. “Mm, yes, it often happened in this very cell,” he said, with something almost like wistfulness. Cecil shuddered in disgust.

His stomach chose that moment to emit a very loud, very protracted growl – a sound that was clearly not the sort of low digestive gurgle it would be making if he really had swallowed Janice. When the sound finally died down, Kevin was silent, and Cecil didn’t dare meet his eyes. “Still hungry,” Cecil murmured, hoping Kevin did not suspect – hoping that if he did, he would have the strength to protect Janice from him.

It felt like a long time before Kevin spoke again. “You’re greedy,” he said quietly, in that sweet, deadly voice. Cecil looked up again without consciously willing it, taken aback by Kevin’s words, and felt a cold lance of fear tighten his chest at what he saw: somehow, though it had not moved at all, Kevin’s monstrous sharp-toothed grin no longer looked like anything that could be taken to resemble a smile. “That’s what they called me, too. You always want more, don’t you? I used to be like you. I just wanted to eat and eat and eat, and they never gave me enough, I thought. Why did they make me to have an endless appetite if they weren’t going to give me endless food? And when I did what I did to Vanessa, I told myself it wasn’t my fault, because they hadn’t given me enough.”

Cecil felt cold all over now, hearing those words. “Who was Vanessa?” he said after a long moment, somehow simultaneously feeling like he needed to know, that he very much did not _want_ to know, and that he already knew.

An unintelligible sound crackled through Kevin’s vocal synthesizer, a sound which Cecil cautiously identified as a sigh, before Kevin spoke. “She was my supervisor. I think they call that position something different where you come from, don’t they? _Handler,_ is it? Anyway. She wasn’t my supervisor for very long, but we became very… close. She was something special. I didn’t talk then, you know – it was before my vocal synthesizer, before glorious StrexCorp – but she _understood_ me. She taught me to write, so we could communicate more easily. She was not afraid of me, though maybe she should have been.”

“You killed her,” Cecil said quietly. He did not have to hear any more to know that.

“Yes,” Kevin said with another crackle-sigh. “I couldn’t stop dreaming of the taste of her insides, and one day, I simply _had_ to taste her for real.” As he spoke, his teeth parted, and Cecil saw what he had hoped he would not ever have to see again: the slick slimy black interior of Kevin’s jaws, which, rather than containing a discernible tongue and throat, housed something that looked like a hybrid structure of jagged mandibles and a curled sucking proboscis. Something pale and greenish dripped from the mandibles and dribbled over the lipless edge of Kevin’s teeth. Cecil had watched spiders spin their webs in the corners of his cage at home long enough to know that they did not eat their food the same way as other creatures – that they essentially digested their prey outside their bodies and then sucked it up. He imagined those mandibles sinking into flesh, clamped into place by Kevin’s hideous teeth, imagined that greenish venom turning human insides into drinkable mush, and shuddered in horror, tightening his arm around the still-trembling Janice.

“She stayed alive for a long time,” Kevin went on. “Long after she could no longer speak or scream. She was crying, silently. Looking at me. I could see it in her eyes, before I sucked them out: she was asking _why?_ But there was no why. I was just hungry. I was always hungry.”

_I’m not like him, I’m not, I’m not,_ Cecil chanted inside his head, but even as he thought it he knew that he was lying to himself. His former handler had asked _why,_ had begged him to _stop, for fuck’s sake,_ halfway down Cecil’s gullet, and muffled though it had been, Cecil had heard him, and he had not stopped. He had fantasized about Carlos’s taste since the first time he had laid eyes on him, and had an opportunity to eat him without consequences presented itself within those first few days, before his initial physical attraction to Carlos had become tangled up with deep emotional attachment, he surely would have done it. But he would never hurt Carlos _now_ , he tried to reassure himself. The thought of how close he had come to devouring Carlos in the desert interrupted that idea, though. _That was different. He was making me do that. He was_ asking _me to…_ _I’m not like him. I’m not._

“But I’m not like that anymore,” Kevin said, his voice somehow suffused with even more cheeriness than before. “Thanks to my neural chip, I’m barely capable of feeling sensations of hunger now. Cravings are few and far between, and easily fixed with a minor recalibration. Soon, you’ll be the same way! Isn’t that exciting?”

Cecil did not offer any comment.

“It may take you longer than most to adapt to StrexMeals,” Kevin continued, unperturbed as usual by Cecil’s silence, “owing to your body being used to working hard to extract nutrients rather than receiving them in an already easily absorbable form. But you will adapt, eventually. And then you can say goodbye to your reliance on human flesh. Won’t that be liberating!”

Cecil thought that perhaps it might be, under very different circumstances, but that he would not describe anything about the present situation as _liberating._

“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” said Kevin. “Perhaps the next time we meet, it will be without cage bars between us. I think by tomorrow they’ll be ready to implant your chip. _I’m_ excited. You should be too.” And with that, he stood, turned, and left the cell at last.

Cecil waited a few minutes after he had left, breathing hard and keeping his arm tucked around Janice, before he said, “All right, Janice, I think it’s safe for you to come out.” He was still concerned about security cameras, but if Kevin wasn’t planning to see him again until tomorrow, perhaps he was not being watched very closely now, if at all. And keeping Janice so close for an entire night would inevitably crack his self-control, he knew.

He lifted the StrexCorp gear and helped Janice out, lifting her in his tentacles and replacing her in her spot on the far side of the cage before retreating to the other side, as far away from her as possible. Janice was quiet for a time, watching the closed cell door, as though afraid that Kevin might come back. After a while she said, so quietly that Cecil almost didn’t hear her, “He sucked out someone’s eyes.”

“I know,” Cecil said. “Don’t think too hard about it.” He shouldn’t have pressed about Vanessa, he thought. Janice hadn’t needed to hear that.

“When he comes back tomorrow, I won’t be able to hide again.” Cecil could hear in her voice that she was struggling not to cry. “He’ll do that to me. He’ll do what he did to that Vanessa person.”

“I’ll protect you, Janice, I –”

“You can’t!” The tears spilled over, and she bit her trembling lip. “You won’t be able to protect me. Nobody can. You might as well just eat me. I’d rather be _your_ dinner than _his_.”

“I’m not going to eat you.”

Janice was crying in earnest now, and Cecil wanted to comfort her, but he did not know how. “I want my mom,” Janice began to wail. “I want Steve. I want m-my _family,_ ” she sobbed.

Cecil hesitated before saying, “Pretend I’m family. Just for tonight.”

That gave Janice enough pause that her sobs quelled for a moment, and she wiped her nose on her sleeve. “W-what? You don’t have a family.”

Trying to think of what would best take Janice’s mind – and his own – off the situation, he changed tactics slightly. “I know. But tonight, I feel like I could really use one. I’m not as brave as you, I… I think it might help me.” _Try to give her back some sense of control in this mess. Let her feel like she’s the one comforting me._

Janice sniffled. “Y-yeah,” she said after a moment. “Yeah, okay. Um, let me see… you’re not young enough to be my brother, but I already have a step-dad. I guess you’d have to be my uncle. Uncle Cecil.”

“Okay,” Cecil said, mustering up a smile. “For tonight, I’ll be your Uncle Cecil.”

“Uncles don’t eat their nieces,” Janice stipulated, as if to be sure he was clear on that point.

“No, of course not,” Cecil agreed. “But I’ve heard that uncles like to play twenty questions with their nieces.”

“Yeah, they do,” Janice said, and though her lips were still trembling a little, she smiled. “You can go first, Uncle Cecil.”


	13. The Rescue Mission

Carlos was sitting on one of the stools, though it was no longer at the stainless steel table. Instead, it was pointed at the only wall in the main room of the scientists’ small complex that did not have windows. To his right, Dave was setting up a small projector, to his left Rachelle was standing by with her arms crossed over her chest, and behind him Nils, who had returned about twenty minutes ago from scouting in the desert, was pacing back and forth.

“Projector’s ready,” said Dave, giving the ancient-looking machine a light pat. “But we need to wait until it gets a little bit darker in here before we can really use it.”

Rachelle sighed impatiently. “Are the slides really necessary? If Carlos really intends to do this, time is kind of, you know, of the essence here.”

“The slides are necessary,” Dave insisted. “Do you want him going in blind? That would be an even bigger suicide mission than it’s already going to be.”

“Stop squabbling, you two,” said Nils, who had stopped pacing. Nils was a short, slightly heavyset person with a square jaw, shrewd eyes, and crewcut brown hair. When Nils had returned and Carlos had been able to formally introduce himself, he had had to abashedly ask whether Nils was a man or a woman, because he had found it impossible to tell. He had been told that Nils preferred the neutral pronoun _they._

“We’re not squabbling,” said Rachelle, shifting her arms from her chest to put her hands on her hips confrontationally.

“Don’t squabble with _me_ about whether or not you’re squabbling,” Nils said preemptively, putting up a hand as if to stop Rachelle’s ornery train of thought in its tracks. “Just wait five more minutes until the sun’s finished setting and start the damn slides.”

“It won’t be dark enough in five minutes –” Dave started to protest, but at the look Nils gave him, he went mum.

Carlos fidgeted uneasily. “Maybe you could tell me the gist of things first, the things that don’t need visual aids,” he suggested.

Dave and Rachelle both looked at Nils, as if asking for permission, and when they gave a curt nod, Rachelle began: “All three of us used to work in the Bluffs. Have you heard of it? It used to be another branch of world government, like the Vale, a long time ago, but when the government lost funding and had to consolidate its locations, the Bluffs went private sector. Research and development. We were making some really great innovations. There were a few failed projects, sure – our bio-engineering department wasn’t nearly what the government’s is, for example – but our life support and sustainment projects were really coming along. That was our department, you know – me and Dave and Nils. Our capital was drying up much faster than we could afford, though. That’s when StrexCorp appeared out of nowhere.”

“They seemed like a miracle at first,” Dave said. “They had capital coming out their ears, and they wanted to acquire the Bluffs. We didn’t know where their money came from, and no one was asking questions. We gladly accepted their new management. But that’s when things started getting strange.”

“Strange?” Carlos echoed.

“Strange,” Nils affirmed. “They started asking us to bypass all kinds of safety procedures in our research. Well, at first they asked.”

“Then they commanded,” Rachelle said.

“And then people who didn’t follow those commands stopped showing up for work,” Dave added.

“And not long after that, we started to realize that StrexCorp had some kind of cultish religious background. We started hearing more and more about something they called the _Smiling God._ We thought it was code at first.”

“Hell, maybe it is,” Dave offered.

“Regardless of what it really was to the higher-ups, there were people who believed it was an actual deity of some kind,” Nils went on. “A deity that idealized cheerfulness, homogeneity, and above all, hard work. Back-breakingly hard. The people who got sucked up into this weird belief – some of them people we’d known for years – they just completely changed. They would beg management to work more hours and to be given less pay for it, as if that was some kind of reward in itself. A handful of them quite literally worked themselves to death, and they did it with a goddamned smile on their faces.”

“It’s getting pretty dark now,” Rachelle said. “Hit up the slides, Dave.”

Dave flicked on the projector, and as it whirred to life, an image of a photograph appeared in pixelated light on the wall. It was the same photograph, Carlos realized, that he had seen earlier in Rachelle’s room. He was able to recognize all three of his rescuers now among the other smiling people wearing lab coats and holding clipboards. “That was our team,” Dave narrated. “Research and development, life support and sustainment systems. Pre-Strex. Hence the _genuine_ smiles.”

He flipped to the next slide. This one was a photograph of a yellow helicopter which had somehow landed directly on top of two dun-colored jeeps, half-crushing both of them. Emblazoned on the side of the helicopter was the word STREXCORP® in giant black letters, and below it, in smaller print, _Believe in a Smiling God™_. “They liked to make a flashy entrance,” Rachelle said.

“If you see one of those yellow helicopters, get to cover fast,” Nils said.

Dave flipped to the next slide again. This photo was slightly blurry as if snapped hastily by a moving hand, and it showed a scientist Carlos didn’t recognize, a man in a white coat working at a lab table. His back was turned to his photographer, but his head was turned back to face the camera at an almost unnatural angle, and he had the most peculiar expression on his face: a smile so broad that it showed all of his teeth up to the gums, the corners of his lips pointed cartoonishly upward – a smile so grotesque it looked more like a skull-like grimace. The smile did not reach his eyes, which looked vacant.

“If you see anyone making this expression, fucking _run._ ” Rachelle’s voice was so cold as she said this that Carlos felt an involuntary shiver run down his spine. He didn’t dare ask why.

Carlos was relieved to see the disturbing image disappear as Dave moved on to the next slide. Rather than another photograph, this one was a scan of a building blueprint. “This is the main building of the Bluffs complex,” Nils narrated. They moved in front of the projection on the wall to point out the part of the blueprint that designated the building’s southwest corner. “If they’re keeping your friend anywhere, it’s probably here. This was the bio-engineering sector. I doubt any… creatures… that resulted from their own breeding experiments are still alive, but they’ve got cages there.”

Carlos nodded. “Okay. How do I get in?” He didn’t want to contemplate how he would get Cecil out of a locked cage once he found him, but he had to take this one step at a time.

Nils pointed to a symbol on one of the lines that designated an exterior wall near the sector they had just indicated. “This is an air duct. It happens to be the largest one that connects with the exterior. It should be just large enough for you to crawl through.”

“Hope you’re not claustrophobic,” Dave quipped, patting Carlos roughly on the shoulder.

Carlos nodded again, choosing to ignore the hand still resting rather condescendingly on his shoulder. “And once I get in, how much do I have to worry about being seen? Are there security cameras? Patrols in the halls?”

All three scientists exchanged looks. “Possibly both,” Rachelle said. “We really don’t know. But it’s a large complex, and people aren’t really big on getting to know each other well within StrexCorp, anyway. You may very well be able to blend in – if you dress right.”

Nils nodded. “We’ve still got our old Strex uniforms. Dave’s might be a little big on you, but I think it would fit all right. If anyone passes you, just stare blankly and give a big smile. Hopefully, you won’t be questioned.”

“Are there any weapons I can take with me?” Carlos asked bluntly. Masquerading as a Strex employee was well and good as plans went, but he certainly did not want to go into such a bizarre and hostile environment without any means of defending himself if something went awry.

The others exchanged a look again. “That one’s going to be tough, kid,” said Dave after a moment of silence.

Rachelle nodded. “We’ve got a couple guns, but we’re seriously low on ammo… and what we have, we need to protect ourselves and gather food. We want to help you in every way we can, Carlos, really we do, but we can’t give you everything.”

 “I understand,” Carlos assured them, and he forced a watery smile. “I’ll just have to not get caught, then.”

“We can drive you out to within a half mile or so of the complex,” Nils said. “That’s as far as we’ll go. You’ll have to go the rest of the way on foot and find the air duct. If we can, we’ll wait for you for up to a few hours. If we feel unsafe, though, we’ll have to leave. If you make it back and we’re not there, assume we had to get out. We’ll try to come back when we can, so if that happens, just lay low and wait.”

Carlos nodded, his jaw set. “I’m ready.”

 

Three hours and a tense drive through the desert later, Carlos was on his belly in a cold metal air duct, crawling painstakingly slowly through the dark, cramped space. He was clad in standard-issue khakis and a bright yellow jacket emblazoned with the word _STREXCORP®_ in black letters across the left breast. Tucked inside the jacket’s inner pockets were a full canteen of water and an old energy bar, given to him by Rachelle before he’d been dropped off a half-mile from the Bluffs, as well as the empty flare gun he’d had in the satchel he’d carried through the desert. Though it wasn’t a real weapon, perhaps if it came down to a confrontation, he could convince someone that it was one, and threaten his way to freedom. It made him feel better than nothing, anyhow.

Because he needed both of his hands to help pull himself forward through the air duct, he had to hold the small penlight the scientists had given him to light his way between his teeth. Every time he came to a branch in the air duct, he hesitated, struggling to remember the directions he’d hastily memorized looking at the more detailed building plans the others had provided. He was certain that no matter which branches he took, he would eventually reach an interior hallway of the building, but given how defenseless he was, it was important that he emerge as close to where Cecil was probably being held as possible. Slightly less risk of being caught, that way.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity crawling through cramped, dimly lit darkness, Carlos came to a grate at the end of the duct passage, beyond which he could see a lit concrete hallway. He pushed on it experimentally. Of course, it was screwed shut. He cursed under his breath. It seemed rusty and a little loose, but there was still no way he could push on it hard enough to force it free. Not with his hands, anyway. If he could somehow kick it, then maybe… but it was utterly impossible to turn around in the tight passage.

After a moment’s consideration, he wriggled backwards, which took considerable effort, until he made it to the last fork in the passage. It took some contorting, but using the space the other passageways provided, he managed to get himself turned around so that his feet were facing the way he needed to go. More wriggling and pushing himself along the passageway and finally he was back at the grate, but this time facing the opposite direction as before. He aligned himself as best he could, pulled up his knees as much as the confined space would allow, and gave the grate a hard kick.

The bottoms of his boots clanged loudly against the metal, which did not give way. He gritted his teeth, hoping no one was in the hallway to hear, and gave another sharp kick. This one did not dislodge the grate either, but he thought he felt it loosen. Finally he gave another, even more forceful kick, impacting the flimsy metal hard enough to feel the shock in his knees, and the grate dislodged, falling to the hallway floor below with a painfully loud clatter.

Carlos hesitated for a long moment, listening for footsteps, for voices. But he heard nothing but the hum of the fans moving air through the ducts behind him, and finally he inched forward until he could slide out of the grate, dropping down to the floor of the hallway outside.

He tucked the penlight inside his jacket and looked down the hallway in both directions. No one in sight and no security cameras – no visible ones, anyway. He didn’t dare appreciate his good luck just yet, though. He mentally consulted the map again to remember which way he ought to go from here, and then turned left down the hallway, doing his best to look like he belonged here, to look like he was not the least bit uncertain or afraid.

A few turns down featureless hallways and he was fairly certain he had reached the place where the maps had indicated he ought to be. He took a steeling breath, turned to the first door he saw, and opened it.

It was dark and empty, but there was a cage at one end of the cell. That was a good sign. It meant he was in the right part of the building, at least.

He advanced and opened the next door, and the next after that. They were identical to the first, and identically empty. He carried on down the hallway like that, opening doors and peering in, and as he was nearing the hall’s end, he was beginning to lose hope. These were all empty, and they all looked as though they had not even been occupied in a very long time, with visible dust and cobwebs in the corners. Was Strex not holding Cecil here at all, but in some other part of the building that he could not possibly hope to find? Was he even _in_ this building? Wherever he was, was he even – and Carlos shuddered to think of the alternative – still alive?

But then Carlos came to one of the last doors in the hall, and as soon as he had begun to open it, he knew that it was different, because the lights were on inside. And as he slowly pushed the door open further, he could hear a sort of gasp, followed by a scuffle of movement from the other end of the cell, and then he began to hear a low, threatening growl. He swallowed nervously, pushed the door the rest of the way open, and stepped inside, leaning back against the door to shut it behind him.

He instantly breathed a sigh of relief. Inside the cage, hunched in a corner on the floor, tentacles raised, head low, teeth bared, growling, was Cecil.

“Cecil, it’s me,” he said, taking a few steps toward the cage, but Cecil only growled louder as he approached, like a cornered animal. Looking at his face, Carlos realized that Cecil’s eyes were fixed on the yellow StrexCorp jacket he was wearing. “ _Cecil._ Look at my face. It’s me. It’s Carlos.”

Cecil’s eyes flicked up, but his hostile expression did not change. It was guttural and garbled because he had not stopped growling, but he said something that, from what Carlos was able to make out, sounded like, “They made a double of you, too?”

Carlos assumed he must have heard the words wrong, because they did not make a lick of sense to him. All he could glean from this strange reaction to his presence was that, for whatever reason, Cecil apparently did not think he was who he said he was.

He watched Cecil shift a hand protectively to his belly, and noticed for the first time that Cecil had fed recently. The shape of the bulge beneath the yellow gear he was wearing was most definitely human, but it was too small to be an adult, and… _oh god_ … he could swear he saw it moving a little. _A child. He… he ate a child alive._ He took a step back in horror, eyes locked on that shape at Cecil’s middle. “Oh god, Cecil, what have you done?”

And then a voice that was not Cecil’s, a young girl’s voice, spoke quietly, almost too quietly for Carlos to hear. “Are you _sure_ it’s not really your boyfriend, Uncle Cecil?”

It took Carlos a long moment to process the fact that this voice was coming from that incriminating child-shaped bulge in Cecil’s middle, and soon after he had he saw a small hand emerge from beneath the hem of the yellow gear, and then a face peeked out, inquisitive brown eyes wide as they met his own. And Carlos finally realized that Cecil had not eaten this child at all, but was, for some reason, hiding her underneath his shirt. Why she had called him _Uncle Cecil_ was another question entirely.

The girl’s eyes had only met Carlos’s own for a fraction of a second when Cecil pulled the hem of his shirt back over her, snarling threateningly at Carlos. _He’s… protecting her,_ Carlos realized, with a surge of affection. _God, look at him, he must be starving, alone in that cage with that girl. He could easily have eaten her, but he’s defending her. He’s stronger than I knew._

He stepped toward the cage again. “Cec, it’s really me, I don’t know why you think it’s not, but it is, and I’m not going to hurt her, or you,” he said. He touched the lock on the cage door, trying to figure out how he was going to get it open. “I’m going to get us out of here. There’s somewhere safe we can go.”

“You just want me to come with you so you can put a chip in my head! I won’t let you do it, no matter how much you look like Carlos! I _know_ you’re not! You’re lying, and if you open that door, I’ll kill you!” Cecil was shaking badly as he shouted the words. He did not look entirely lucid, eyes wide and glazed, panting slightly, a light sheen of sweat coating his pale brow. Carlos wondered whether he had been drugged.

“ _Please,_ ” Carlos said, trying to keep his voice low and soothing so as not to agitate Cecil further, though inside he was panicking a little, trying to figure out how on earth he was going to escape with a crazed, paranoid, shouting Cecil in tow. “Just listen to me for a minute. I lost you in the sandstorm, I didn’t think I was going to make it, but three scientists found me and rescued me. I was so worried about you, Cecil, but the scientists told me what must have happened to you, they told me about these Strex people. I don’t know what they’ve done to you or what they’ve made you believe, but I’m me, I’m Carlos, I’m here to get you out, and I… Cecil, I love you.” These were not the circumstances in which he had imagined saying those words, but if they might calm Cecil, reestablish trust, then now was as good a time as any to voice the feeling that he had, consciously or unconsciously, known that he had for some time now.

Cecil’s eyes widened for just a moment, his features softening, but then his lip curled back into a snarl again as he said, “Carlos has never said that. Carlos wouldn’t say that. Now I know for _sure_ you’re not him. If you open that door, I’ll eat you whole.” Watching the slaver drip from Cecil’s sharp teeth, watching Cecil’s eyes rake hungrily up and down Carlos’s body, Carlos knew that it was not an empty threat.

He was just trying to think of what else he could possibly say to convince Cecil that he really was himself when he heard the handle of the door to the cell turn. He felt his heart miss a beat, but his body reacted almost faster than his brain could think, and he found himself dashing behind the door as it was opening, hiding from the view of the person entering. As he did so he pulled the flare gun from inside his jacket, clutching the cold metal in his sweaty hand.

As soon as the woman entering had passed through the door, Carlos raised the flare gun and pressed the end of it hard against her temple. He fumbled for the door handle with his other hand to push the door shut behind her. “Don’t move or I’ll shoot,” he warned, rather unnecessarily, as the woman had already raised her hands slightly in a gesture of submission.

“I don’t know who you are or what you think you’re doing,” said the woman, in a voice that in no way betrayed fear or even discomfort at the present circumstances, moving her eyes, but not her head, in an effort to get a look at Carlos out of her peripheral vision. “But I’d reconsider my plan if I were you. There is someone else on the way to this cell, and whether he finds us like this or finds you standing over my corpse, either way it will not end well for you.”

Carlos could not tell whether or not she was bluffing, but it took him a second to realize that she was talking at least partially in an effort to distract him enough that he would not see her reaching for a gun inside her jacket. He shoved his hand roughly where she had been reaching and snagged her weapon, tucking it inside his own jacket. He did not dare switch it out with the flare gun lest he alert her that she had never been in any real danger in the first place.

“Take off your jacket,” he commanded, in case she had more weapons hidden there. When she hesitated, he jammed the tip of the flare gun harder against the side of her head, and she slowly complied, shrugging off the StrexCorp jacket and letting it fall to the floor. The substantial sound it made as it hit the ground certainly suggested that the gun Carlos had taken had not been the only weapon concealed within.

He shoved his free hand into the pockets of her khaki pants; one was empty, but the other contained a small keyring, which he withdrew. “Is one of these the key for this cage?” Met with silence, he jammed the gun against her temple again. “ _Is it?”_

Lips pressed together, eyes narrowed in a look of hatred, the woman gave a nearly imperceptible nod.

“Walk towards the cage,” he ordered, and as she did so he sidled along with her, keeping the gun to her head. When they were close enough, he tried the keys in the lock one at a time, fumbling clumsily as he tried to do it with one hand and blindly, since he refused to take his eyes off of the StrexCorp employee.

Finally he found the correct key and the lock clicked open. He risked taking his eyes off his captive for a split second to glance at Cecil, and saw that he had let the girl out from beneath his shirt and had placed her behind him, covering her from view with his body. His eyes were fixed on the lock that Carlos had just released. The words Cecil had just spoken before the woman’s appearance replayed on a loop in Carlos’s head: _If you open that door, I’ll eat you whole._ He could only hope that this confrontation with Cecil’s actual captor would have convinced him that Carlos had not been lying.

Though he had only looked away for a moment, it had apparently been a moment too long, for he suddenly felt a fist collide with the side of his face. The woman had punched him, hard, and he staggered backward with the force of the surprise blow. She took advantage of his shock to snatch the gun from his hand and pointed it at him, backing him up against the wall. “Ha,” she snarled triumphantly, with a terrible smile. “Gotcha.” She aimed the gun directly at Carlos’s head.

It was only when she had pulled the trigger, and nothing had happened, that she looked down at the gun in her hands and realized what it was: a flare gun, and an empty one at that. She threw it away with a cry of rage, and Carlos could see that she was about to lunge for her jacket on the floor when, suddenly, she screamed.

The unlocked cage door had swung open, and Cecil had latched onto the woman’s ankle like a dog on a soup bone. Carlos saw blood pooling on the floor around her boot as Cecil’s teeth sank deep into the flesh. She tried to kick him in the face with her other foot, but before she could, Cecil had wrenched his head back and pulled her leg with it, throwing her completely off balance so that she staggered and fell to the floor. His tentacles got hold of her as she tried to squirm back to her feet, one wrapping around each of her arms, one around her torso, one around her neck. And as she twitched and struggled like a fly caught in honey, he let go of her ankle to begin sliding his bloody jaws over her boots. Carlos knew that he was going to eat her, but all he could think in that moment was _better her than me._

And so he watched, without trying to interfere, as Cecil worked his jaws rapidly up the fighting woman’s legs, gulping frenetically in an effort to get her more quickly down his throat. He had swallowed her up to her hips by the time Carlos remembered the child still in the cage, and how horrifying this must be for her to watch. He should go to her, he thought, comfort her if he could, or at least block her view of what was happening. But he had to step over the woman to get through the cage door, and as he tried to do so, a hand closed around his ankle. The woman had grabbed him, and he managed to jerk free, but as he did so, he tripped; he tried to right himself against the cage bars, but he couldn’t manage it, and he fell.

She grabbed for him again, seizing hold of his forearm this time, her grip so fierce that he was certain she would be drawing blood with her fingernails if it wasn’t for the StrexCorp jacket he was wearing. She was slightly blue in the face from Cecil’s tentacle constricting her neck, but her vicious eyes were locked on Carlos. Her look said _if I’m going down, I’m taking you with me._

He tried to pull away and stand, tried to jerk his arm free of her grip, tried to pry her fingers loose with his other hand, but her grip was iron and there was no escaping it. But surely she would have to let go soon. Cecil had gulped her down to her shoulders now, his belly beginning to bulge significantly as her legs and lower back were forced to curl within it. A few slower, heavy swallows later and her head, with its hateful gaze, had disappeared into his throat, so that only her arms protruded from Cecil’s bloodstained mouth, but still she did not let go of Carlos’s arm.

The frantic energy with which Cecil had started devouring the woman was flagging now, it seemed, after the effort of so quickly ingesting her, and the next few swallows were slow and labored, sucking up the Strex employee’s arms inch by inch. And when her hands were finally slurped into Cecil’s mouth, Carlos’s hand was pulled in with them, up to the wrist. He felt the slick warm interior of Cecil’s mouth, felt his tongue exploring and tasting the three human hands currently enclosed in his jaws.

“Cecil,” Carlos said urgently, putting his other hand on Cecil’s shoulder and shaking it. “Cecil, let go.” But much as he had been when he had swallowed Pamela Winchell alive at their old base, Cecil was barely responsive. Carlos tried to pull his hand free, but not only was the woman’s grip still inescapable; he also felt Cecil’s teeth close slightly at his wrist, not enough to bite down and hurt him, but enough to threaten to do so. The message was loud and clear: keep struggling like that and you might just lose a hand.

Cecil swallowed thickly. Carlos felt his hand sucked into the confines of Cecil’s throat with inexorable force, felt the intense suction practically locking it in place. He tried to move it; pulling it back into Cecil’s mouth was impossible, though pushing it slightly further into his throat was not, as the peristaltic movement of the muscles aided motion in that direction. He felt the panic rising in his chest as Cecil swallowed again. Surely Cecil couldn’t swallow two people at once like this? His stomach couldn’t possibly handle so much, could it? He was not actually sure what Cecil’s upper limit was on how much he could consume at once, and he had, after all, come damn close to having eaten two bodies at the same time that first day at the infected base, eating another corpse with an only partially digested body already in his stomach. But even if it _was_ physically possible, surely Cecil would need to stop swallowing to breathe before he could finish getting Carlos down? These panicked thoughts swirled into a muddle in his head as Cecil kept on swallowing his arm, and before he knew it Cecil was closing in on his shoulder, his hands reaching out to hold onto Carlos and grip him in place better, tentacles twining around his other arm and the base of his torso to restrict his movement. The woman had finally let go of his wrist, but that hardly mattered now: Cecil wasn’t letting go of him.

“Cecil, _stop!_ Look at what you’re doing!” Carlos tried again, panic in his voice, but Cecil’s eyes were rolled back and he seemed, for all intents and purposes, unconscious to the world around him.

Carlos felt one of Cecil’s hands against the side of his head, felt it forced sideways, hard, so that it was pressed against his shoulder. He realized too late that Cecil was positioning him to be able to engulf his head in his jaws, and he barely had time to take a deep breath, as though preparing to go underwater, before his vision went dark and he felt Cecil’s tongue sloshing wetly against the upper part of his face. He screwed his eyes shut as the probing tongue lapped over his eyelids. The sound of Cecil swallowing was incredibly loud with his head halfway inside Cecil’s mouth, and the top of his head was pulled inescapably into his gullet as the rest of his head was forced into his mouth. He could feel Cecil’s lips around his neck, his teeth grazing the side of his face, and as his tongue slid up and over Carlos’s nose and mouth and cheeks to continue tasting him, it almost felt as though it lingered against Carlos’s lips, like a grotesque, insanely intimate kiss.

And then – _gl-ulp –_ the moment was over and Carlos’s head was entirely enclosed in the constricting wet heat of Cecil’s throat. He could not draw a breath and, overwhelmed with intense, instinctual panic, he kicked and flailed and struggled, but none of that seemed to impede or even slow down what was happening. Conscious thought was drowned out now: he was prey and a predator was eating him and the only thing left to do was struggle with all he had left in him, even though it was a struggle he knew he could not win. He could feel Cecil’s jaws moving over his other shoulder as he was swallowed deeper and deeper still, and soon he realized he could hear a rhythmic thumping near his head. _Cecil’s heartbeat,_ he understood hazily after a moment. It was likely the lack of oxygen bringing him to the brink of unconsciousness, but a strange calm began to steal over him, and his struggles slowed considerably. As he was slowly pushed deeper, he thought dizzily of what lay ahead: Cecil’s stomach, already stretched full with the woman he’d swallowed, undoubtedly already getting to work to start the digestive process. Carlos would join her there, packed too tight to move. Maybe, if this breathless lightheadedness kept up, he wouldn’t really feel it all that much when digestion started working on him. Maybe he’d just listen to Cecil’s heartbeat and his breathing and the gurgles of his stomach in the darkness until he faded away. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a horrible way to go.

But then something changed; he felt Cecil tense around him for just a second, and then the throat that had held him so tightly, that had dragged him so inexorably toward his fate, relaxed. It was still impossibly tight, and peristalsis was still urging him gently but insistently downward, but he could pull back now, could move in the opposite direction to the one Cecil’s body wanted him to go in. He felt a small hand on his own, the one that was not deep inside Cecil, and that feeling urged him to use the last of his strength to keep pulling back, to pull his arm, head and shoulders up and back until finally he emerged, slimy with saliva and gasping for breath, from Cecil’s mouth.

He spent a few moments just catching his breath, shaking, watching spots dance in his vision as his brain recovered from the oxygen deprivation, before he tried to process what had happened. The little girl was beside him on the floor, her legs stretched out awkwardly behind her, one hand still holding the flare gun which she had picked up and had, evidently, used to bash Cecil in the head until he was unconscious.

“Are you okay, Mr. Scientist?” asked the girl, biting her lip. “Sorry it took me so long to get over here and help. My legs don’t work so well.”

“I’m f-fine,” Carlos choked out after a moment, his voice hoarse. His thoughts were all over the place, his brain still swimming in adrenaline. “Thanks for… I mean I’m sorry you had to… see that…”

“That’s okay,” said the child. “I’m glad he ate up Lauren Mallard. I hate her. But when he started eating _you_ up too, I knew something was wrong.”

“Thanks,” Carlos said again. He wiped Cecil’s saliva off his face with his sleeve.

“I’m Janice, by the way,” said the girl, smiling in spite of everything that had just happened. “I’m sure you have a plan to get us out of here, don’t you, Mr. Scientist?”

God, Carlos wished that he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to have made you wait so long for a new chapter. Happy New Year!


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